To Trade or Not to Trade: The Strategic Trading of Insiders around News Announcements

We argue that insiders' decisions to trade in short windows before news announcements are likely to result from a trade-off between the incentives to capitalize on the foreknowledge of the disclosure and the risk of regulatory scrutiny and lost reputation. We provide evidence that insider buying is driven by the trade-off, while selling is primarily influenced by the deterring effect of the regulatory and reputation risks. We show that insiders strategically choose the amount of shares bought ahead of good news announcements. They increase their purchases as the price impact of the news goes up, but we find that the amount of shares purchased levels off as the news becomes extreme. In contrast, we find that the probability of insider selling significantly decreases with the price impact of the forthcoming bad news. To further support our arguments on the importance of incentives and disincentives to trade, we show that the strategic trading is mainly observed in the most price-sensitive groups of news announcements, it is clearly pronounced for best informed executives (CEOs), and that trading patterns change with changes in regulations, and insiders with higher reputation at risk limit their trading ahead of bad news.insider trading, private information, information disclosure, regulation

Institutional Investors and the Information Content of Earnings Announcements: The Case of Poland

This paper investigates the relationship between market reaction to earnings surprises and institutional concentration in the firm?s shareholders base. We use data from the Polish stock market where pension funds form a homogenous and highly competitive investor class with an increasing share in the market capitalisation and trading volume. We find evidence that higher pension funds holdings in a company tend to reduce the magnitude of market reaction around public disclosures. We interpret these findings as an information advantage that funds have over individual investors, which may result from scale economies in gathering and processing public information, as well as from access to privileged information in the interim period. We also find that company mangers are selective as to the type of information they provide to the market prior to their scheduled disclosures. --public disclosure,information advantage,institutional investors

Related Securities, Allocation of Attention and Price Discovery: Evidence from NYSE-Listed Non-U.S. Stocks

In this paper we explore how the composition of a market maker's portfolio and allocation of attention across securities in the portfolio affect pricing. We analyze whether more attention devoted to similar securities enables a market maker to extract information relevant to a stock from order flow to related securities and consequently whether it leads to improved price discovery of the stock. We base on the recent literature on allocation of attention in share trading (Corwin and Coughenour, 2008; Boulatov et al., 2009) and define the prominence of a security as the proportion of its dollar volume in the total volume of the specialist portfolio it belongs to. Our empirical tests are focused on New York Stock Exchange specialists and the U.S. share in price discovery of 64 British and French companies cross-listed on the NYSE. We define related securities as stocks from the same country, the same region or other foreign stocks. We find strong evidence that an increase in the prominence of related stocks in the specialist portfolio leads to a higher U.S. share in price discovery of our sample stocks. We interpret our findings as evidence that concentrating market makers in similar stocks reduces information asymmetries and improves the information environment. To support our argument, we show that an increase in the prominence of other foreign stocks in the specialist portfolio significantly reduces the adverse selection component of the bid-ask spread.NYSE specialists, cross-listing, related stocks, price discovery

Managerial shareholding policies and retention of vested equity incentives

Previous studies show that corporate executives tend to liquidate equity incentives when equity-based compensation vests. This undermines long-term incentives and destroys shareholders value. It is suggested that the unwinding incentives can be limited when the firm adopts a minimum executive shareholding policy. We provide the first evidence of the effectiveness of such policies. Using data for UK FTSE 350 companies, we find that executives whose shareholding is below the policy minimum retain more newly vested equity, and the incentives to retain shares decreases when executive shareholdings are above the policy minimum. We also find higher firm valuations when executive share ownership increases relative to the minimum holdings required. Our results have important implications for the debate on executive remuneration regulations

Changes in bird communities of Admiralty Bay, King George Island (West Antarctic): insights from monitoring data (1977–1996).

Abstract: The paper summarizes results of twenty years of seabird observations carried out between 1977 and 1996 on the western shore of Admiralty Bay (King George Island, South Shetlands, Antarctic). Changes in population size, distribution and phenology of the breeding species as well as the appearance of non-breeding species are reported. A total of 34 species of birds were observed, including 13 breeding species. Among the non-breeding species, four were observed to visit the site regularly, six rarely, and the remaining 11 were observed only occasionally. Among breeding populations, three Pygoscelis penguin species, the main krill consumers, were most numerous. The Adélie Penguin (P. adeliae) dominated among the penguins nesting in the investigated areas, reaching 23,661 breeding pairs in 1978. Two other penguin species were less abundant with population sizes of approximately 7,200 breeding pairs for the Chinstrap Penguin (P. antarcticus) and 3,100 breeding pairs for the Gentoo Penguin (P. papua) in the same year. During the following two decades, breeding populations of pygoscelid species experienced a declining trend and their numbers were reduced by 68.0% for Chinstrap, 67.1% for Gentoo, and 33.9% for Adélie Penguins. The data reported here represent a unique reference basis and provide valuable information about indicator species, suitable for comparison with contemporary observations of bird populations in the Antarctic Peninsula region, a place of rapidly occurring climate changes and intensive harvesting of marine living resources

Pygoscelid penguins breeding distribution and population trends at Lions Rump rookery, King George Island

Abstract: Long term changes (46 years) in the abundance of pygoscelid penguins breeding populations and nests distribution in the Lions Rump (King George Island) colony were in− vestigated in three time intervals, according to previously published two censuses and one original study conducted in 2010. At that time a detailed colony map based on the GIS system was made. Results of this study showed different trends for each investigated species. In the last three decades Adélie penguin breeding populations showed strong declining tendencies (69.61%). In contrast, the population of gentoo penguins represents the reverse trend, increas− ing 171.85% over the same period. Observed changes in both penguin population sizes are re− flected in the different spatial and geographic distribution of their nests. The population changes observed at the Lions Rump colony are consistent with the relevant pygoscelid pen− guin tendencies in the western Antarctic Peninsula region. Breeding penguin population dy− namics at Lions Rump area with a minimal disturbance by human activity may well illustrate a natural response of those birds to environmental changes in the Antarctic

Rapid environmental changes in the western antarctic peninsula region due to climate change and human activity

The Antarctic and the Southern Ocean are a critically important part of the Earth system. The climatic, physical, and biological properties of this region are closely linked to other parts of the global environment. 200 years of direct human impact, recent climate amelioration and changes in the main sources and circulation of biogenic compounds as well as accumulation of industrial contaminants have significantly affected the whole ecosystem. Particularly sensitive is the region of the Western Antarctic Peninsula, which is considered to be one of the hot spots of the Earth. In this paper, we review recent literature and compare it with historical data to estimate and predict the consequences of this process. The Antarctic ecosystems can no longer be regarded as pristine. Global as well as local human influence has transgressed the barriers isolating that continent from the rest of the World, causing previously observed changes to accelerate