This paper offers new evidence on informed trading around merger and acquisition announcements from the UK equity and options market. The analysis suggests that in about 25%-33% of events there is abnormal option trading volume during the month that precedes the announcement. Such evidence is...

This paper studies how insider trading intensity is affected by the joint effects of competition and regulation. Prior theoretical research has found that, in the absence of regulation, more insiders leads to more insider trading. We show that optimal regulation, however, features detection...

The economic and monetary unification, the globalization of markets and the increasing use of new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have increased the level of competition in all sectors of the economy by opening the way to processes of Mergers and Acquisitions between companies....

Prior studies suggest that investors have limited attention. Tests of the inattention hypothesis have been performed in the context of relatively small corporate events, particularly earnings announcements. Presumably, large corporate events would always attract sufficient investor attention....