Many companies in Germany must provide information beyond financial figures in their annual reports. For some years now, legislators have increasingly required information on non-financial aspects, such as the shares of women in leadership positions. Using a quantitative text analysis of annual...

I show that nonroutine premerger trades by acquirer outside directors contain a significant amount of private information and indicate opportunistic trading on the information. I find that outside directors sell shares before less valuable deals and purchase shares before more value enhancing...