Share Price Reaction Research Articles

Syndicated Loan Announcements and Borrower Value

AbstractAnnouncements of syndication loans increase borrowers' shareholder wealth if they are revolving credit agreements but not if they are term loans. Share price responses to revolving credit announcements are positive and significant, whereas the wealth effect for term loans is negative and significant. The results show that announcements from both the financial press and commercial information providers can affect borrower share price reaction. Overall, single syndication announcements appear to be more newsworthy than multiple announcements reported in the financial press, and we find evidence of information leakage, post‐announcement drift, or both.

Market reaction to the expiration of IPO lockup provisions

Initial public offering (IPO) lockup agreements prevent insider sale of shares for specified periods of time (often 180 days). This study investigates share price reactions at and around the time the lockup agreements expire. Results indicate statistically significant negative abnormal returns in the event window surrounding the expiration date. The results are consistent with informational asymmetries and decreasing incentive alignment between insiders and general shareholders. In addition, multivariate analysis identifies several variables that help explain these abnormal returns.

Management Compensation and the Managerial Labor Market

The papers in this volume and briefly summarized in this introduction document that: (1) executive compensation is positively related to share price performance: (2) poor firm performance is associated with increased executive turnover; (3) managers choose accounting accruals in ways, that increase the value of their bonus awards; (4) the adoption of new short- and long-term executive compensation plans and golden parachutes are associated with positive share price reactions; (5) the death of a firm's founder is associated with positive share price reactions; and (b) managers are less likely to make merger bids that lower their stock prices when they hold more stock in their firm. These findings are interpreted as generally supporting the view that executive compensation packages help align managers' and shareholders' interests.

Equity Rights Issues in Spain: Flotation Costs and Wealth Effects

This paper analyses the flotation costs and the share price reaction of equity offerings in Spain. The results report a positive relationship between relative flotation costs and the underwriting of an issue, and a negative relationship between such costs and ownership concentration. Fixed flotation costs and a negative relationship with the gross offer proceeds are also observed. On average, there is a negative share price reaction on the date of the ‘previous communication’ to the Comisión Nacional del Mercado de Valores. The different sub‐samples analysed according to the underwriting of the issue and the discount offered reveal no statistical differences.

Client-firm market reaction to regulatory action against a major accounting firm

This study assesses the audit client firm share price reactions to a disclosure that the California State Board of Accountancy considered revoking Ernst & Young's (E&Y) license to practice in California due to alleged gross negligence in the Lincoln Savings and Loan fraud scandal. The insurance hypothesis and/or the audit quality explanation justify the expectation of significant client-firm share price reactions. We find limited empirical support that the disclosure of the revocation event is associated with negative market responses for E&Y’s clients. Results also indicate that auditor-supplied insurance and audit quality are more important for client firms experiencing financial distress, higher growth rates, and higher return variability.

Share Price Reactions to Work-Family Initiatives: An Institutional Perspective

Share Price Reactions to Work-Family Initiatives: An Institutional Perspective

Stock Market Reaction to the Appointment of Outside Directors

This paper examines the UK stock market's reaction to the appointment of outside (non‐executive) board members. Tests conducted using a sample of 714 appointments reported by EXTEL between 1 July, 1993 and 31 December, 1996, indicate a strong interaction between appointee characteristics and the magnitude of the agency problem: the share price reaction to outside director appointments is significantly more favourable when board ownership is low and the appointee possesses strong ex ante monitoring incentives. In contrast, the appointment of independent and manager‐affiliated outside directors does not appear to benefit shareholders on average, even in the presence of serious agency problems.

The share price reaction to announcements of key executive dismissals by companies listed on the JSE Securities Exchange

This paper investigates the share price response to announcements of key executive dismissals by companies listed on the JSE Securities Exchange over the 25-year period 1975-1999. Announcements containing information about permanent replacements are associated with upward share price reactions. The evidence appears to be consistent with a market that is already aware of poor performance associated with management and regard the dismissal as good news and a sign that the problem may be remedied. It appears that shareholders are likely to perceive outsider appointments as immediately beneficial, but take a wait-and-see attitude towards insider appointments.

Shareholder Wealth Effects of European Domestic and Cross-Border Takeover Bids

In this paper, we analyse the short-term wealth effects of large (intra)European takeover bids. We find large announcement effects of 9% for target firms and a cumulative abnormal return that includes the price run-up over the two-month period prior to the announcement date of 23%. However, the share price of the bidding firms reacts positively with a statistically significant announcement effect of only 0.7%. We also show that the status of a takeover bid has a large impact on the short-term wealth effects of target's and bidder's shareholders, with hostile acquisitions triggering substantially larger price reactions than friendly mergers and acquisitions. We also find strong evidence that cash offers trigger much larger share price reactions than all-equity offers or combined bids consisting of cash, equity and loan notes. A high market-to-book ratio of the target leads to a higher bid premium, but triggers a negative price reaction for the bidding firm. Also, our results suggest that bidding firms should not diversify by acquiring target firms that do not match their core business. Surprisingly, domestic bids create larger short-term wealth effects than cross-border mergers and acquisitions. The country dummies we use proxy for institutional differences, such as different corporate governance regimes (ownership concentration, takeover regulation, protection of shareholder rights, and informational transparency). In addition, we investigate whether the predominant reason for mergers and acquisitions is synergies, agency problems or managerial hubris and find that synergies are the prime motivation for bids and that targets and bidders tend to share the resulting wealth gains.

The Choice between Rights-Preserving Issue Methods. Regulatory and Financial Aspects of Issuing Seasoned Equity in the UK

This paper examines the choice between two rights-preserving issue methods of seasoned equity offers in the UK as well as the factors determining the offer price and stock market announcement reactions.Firstly, equity issues in the UK are underwritten for different reasons than in other countries.Only severely financially distressed companies choose not to underwrite their share offer. Second, the average announcement reaction to non-underwritten issues is much more negative than to underwritten issues.This contrasts sharply with the results found in other countries, such as the US.Third, underwritten rights issues experience a negative announcement return whereas the share price reaction to underwritten open offers is positive.The choice of issue method and the subsequent announcement reaction are explained by directors' and institutional investors' interests, growth opportunities, stock market uncertainty and liquidity in the market for rights.

Industry conditions, growth opportunities and market reactions to convertible debt financing decisions

Firms that issue convertible debt have high debt- and equity-related costs of external finance. Existing theories of convertible debt finance differ primarily in their identification of the specific causes of the debt- and equity-related costs of external finance. To assess the theoretical issuance motives separately, we propose a simple framework that characterizes how issuers should design convertible debt to efficiently mitigate specific debt- and equity-related costs of external finance. We provide evidence from 588 security offer announcements that supports the hypotheses that: (1) convertible debt can be designed to mitigate different combinations of debt- and equity-related costs of external finance and (2) share price reactions depend on the security design decisions. The results also illustrate that the relations between firm value, financial leverage, investment opportunities, and the rate of future growth are more complex among convertible debt issuers than situations where firms issue standard financial securities.

Stock price reactions to Sino-European joint ventures

Do European investments in China create shareholders’ value? The question is posed, but does not ask for a definite answer. Many factors have to be considered when analyzing the valuation effect of European direct investment in China and its determinants. The aim of this article is to better understand the real impact of the Sino-European joint venture announcements on the stock market value of the European partners. First of all, on the basis of an event study methodology, this article presents empirical observations of the share price reactions in different European stock markets to 68 Sino-European joint venture announcements.

Shareholder Wealth Effects of Large European Takeover Bids

In this paper, we analyse the short-term wealth effects of large (intra) European takeover bids. We find large announcement effects of 9% for target firms, but the cumulative abnormal return that includes the price run-up over the two-week period prior to the event rises to 20%. The share price of the bidding firms reacts positively with a statistically significant announcement effect of only 0.7%. We also show that the type of takeover bid has a large impact on the short term-wealth effects of target and bidder shareholders with hostile takeovers triggering substantially larger price reactions than friendly mergers and acquisitions. When a UK target or bidder is involved, the abnormal returns outperform those of Continental European bids. We also find strong evidence that the means of payment in an offer has a large impact on the share price reactions. High market-to-book ratio of the target lead to a higher bid premium combined but trigger a negative price reaction for the bidding firm. Bidding firms should not further diversify by acquiring target firms that do not match the bidder's core business. We also investigate whether the predominant reason for takeovers is synergies, agency problems or managerial hubris. We find a significant positive correlation between target shareholder gains and total gains for the merged entity as well as between target gains and bidder gains. This suggests that synergies are the prime motivation for bids and that targets and bidders tend to share the resulting wealth gains.

Market reaction to published and non-published corporate loan announcements

Prior research examining the role of financial intermediaries in reducing the problems of information asymmetry has reported that borrowers experience a positive share price reaction to credit agreement announcements. However, it is generally acknowledged that these studies have the potential for a reporting bias because they use only one source of information for credit agreement announcements. To examine this reporting bias, we distinguish between “published” and “non-published” announcements in Australia. We find that borrowers’ share prices react positively to announcements that are published in both the financial press and by a dedicated information provider. No statistically significant reaction is observed for the non-published credit agreements.

Layoff announcements, share price reaction and long-term financial performance on the JSE Securities Exchange

Extracted from text ... Number 56 - Part 4 N Bhana* Layoff announcements, share price reaction and long-term financial performance on the JSE Securities Exchange *Principal: Regent Business School, PO Box 10686, Marine Parade 4056, Republic of South Africa. Visiting Professor, University of Luton Acknowledgement for the financial assistance of the National Research Foundation: Social Sciences and Humanities towards this research is hereby acknowledged. Opinions expressed in this paper and conclusions arrived at are those of the author and are not necessarily to be attributed to the National Research Foundation. Email: nbhana@regent.ac.za 1. Introduction Announcements of layoffs and corporate downsizing are generally viewed as ..

When Unions “Mattered”: The Impact of Strikes on Financial Markets, 1925–1937

This examination of the Stock Market's responsiveness to strikes looks specifically at strike actions that labor historians generally view as the major ones occurring in the United States in the years 1925–37. The authors find that strikes had large, negative effects on industry stock value. Longer strikes, violent strikes, strikes in which unions “won,” industry-wide strikes, strikes that led to union recognition, and strikes that led to large wage increases were associated with larger negative share price reactions than were other strikes. Much of the “news” generated by the typical strike seems to have been registered by the Stock Market very early in the strike. However, there were also some fairly large stock price reactions to news that could be fully revealed only at the end of a strike.

Shareholder wealth effects of CEO departures: evidence from the UK

This paper examines share price behaviour surrounding announcements of CEO departures from UK firms listed on the All Share Index between 1990 and 1995. We find that many firms choose not to announce CEO departures, and that these firms have poorer performance records, and higher chances of future failure, than those firms who officially announce CEO turnover to the London Stock Exchange. The market reacts negatively to announcements of top executive departures, especially when the CEO is dismissed or leaves to take up another job. Share price reactions to the disclosure of top executive departure are significantly affected by the financial risk of the firm and whether the board announces a replacement CEO.

Bonus Share Issues and Announcement Effect: Australian Evidence

This study examines share price reaction to announcement of bonus share issues of Australian companies (equivalent to stock dividends in the US and scrip issues in the UK). Price reaction to bonus issue announcements from the day of the announcements to the day after the announcements (day 0 to day 1) is statistically significant and positive of average 2.37% for uncontaminated events and 2.11% for contaminated events employing the market model. We do not find any statistically significant difference of price reaction between these two groups. However, price reaction to bonus issue announcements is statistically significantly stronger for industrial non-financial companies and mining companies than financial companies. Pre-announcement effect was found only for industrial non-financial companies and financial companies that announced bonus issues simultaneously with other market sensitive information such as interim or final results. The magnitude of price reactions to bonus issue announcements is statistically related to the size of the bonus issues and the pre-announcement effect.

Estimating the Value of Political Connections

While political connections have been widely discussed in the literature on corruption, little work has been done to assess the value of these connections. This paper uses the Jakarta Stock Exchange's reaction to news about former President Suharto's health to address this issue. By examining the difference in share price reactions of firms with varying degrees of political exposure, a market valuation of the proportion of a firm’s value derived from political connections is inferred. The implied value is very high, suggesting that as much as a quarter of a firm’s share price may be accounted for by political connections. (JEL D21, G14)

The Market Valuation and Trading Volume Effects of the Creation of the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund on Property‐liability Insurers

The Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund was officially created in November, 1993. This study analyzes investor reactions during the creation of the Florida Hurricane Catastrophe Fund. We find significant share price reactions for four of six legislative events consistent with the predictions of the theory outlined. We use both a generalized least squares portfolio approach and Corrado's (1989) rank statistic, a nonparametric event study methodology, to arrive at our findings. Empirical analysis of trading volume corroborates the findings involving share price reactions. We also find that the market is able to discriminate between property‐liability insurers on the basis of hurricane exposure and firm size.