This paper analyzes informed trading in acquiring firms through (stock) merger announcements. We show that pre …-announcement abnormal option volumes in acquiring firms strongly increase ahead of a stock merger (by approximately 300%). Furthermore, we … abnormal put option trading before stock merger announcements. Overall, our results support the view that top executives have a …

of targets, bidders, and their peers upon takeover announcement, and closing or withdrawal. We distinguish five common M … investors believe in gains through the exploitation of market power by the post-merger entity. In a multinomial logistic model …

This paper offers new evidence on informed trading around merger and acquisition announcements from the UK equity and …

. Therefore, this study aims to close this gap by exploring the effect of merger announcements on CDS spreads empirically. A …