We assess trading and non-trading characteristics of takeovers that trigger Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigations of illegal insider trading. We find that targets with more pronounced abnormal stock price run-ups (especially in long pre-bid windows) and abnormal trading volume...

Based on a comprehensive sample of European mergers over the 1997--2011 period, we find that information leakages experienced by target firms are conditioned on the investor protection characteristics in the target’s country. Specifically, information leakages are smaller for targets in...

Short selling exchange-traded funds (ETFs) has become a common means of speculating or hedging in response to pessimistic expectations about a specific market or sector, as the short interest of ETFs is more than 10 times that of individual stocks, on average. We determine that sector-based ETFs...

Tracking stock for a unit of a firm presumably allows the market to value and monitor that unit independently of the rest of the firm.Announcement of the creation of tracking stock elicits an abnormal share price response of 2.17%on average over a two-day period.The share price response at the...

Our objective is to investigate the short-term over- or underreaction of six U.S. stock market indexes. We find evidence of a one-day underreaction for winners (days on which an index experiences abnormally high returns) and losers (days on which an index experiences abnormally poor...

Previous empirical studies show that announcements of seasoned common stock registrations and issuances lead to significant reductions in common stock prices and shareholder wealth. Nevertheless, some firms issue common stock frequently. Our empirical study of nonutility firms that issued common...