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

Why do Companies Include Warrants in Seasoned Equity Offerings: The case of French Unit Offerings.

We analyse the reasons why companies issue units when they raise additional capital. In contrast to previous evidence, our results show that units are not offered to mitigate the agency conflicts or to signal security mispricing as they are predominantly issued during cold periods, in public rather than in rights offerings, and when the issue is underwritten. In contrast, the results indicate that companies choose to offer units to circumvent the offer price regulation and to underprice their seasoned equity offering so as to minimise the issue cost and the risk of failure of the issue. These results provide support for the net proceeds maximization hypothesis.Warrants; Equity Issue; Flotation Method; Unit Offerings;

The Market Valuation of Share Repurchases in Europe

We analyze a uniquely constructed data set of open market share repurchases across a sample of European firms. We find that the announcement date market reaction is lower than that in the US, mainly because of (i) the relatively large number of recurring announcements which generate significantly lower returns than the initial announcements of intention to repurchase shares; (ii) the rather low market reaction in France, due probably to specific governance and corporate cultural issues; and (iii) the regulatory reform that allowed UK firms to keep the repurchased shares as treasury stock, which decreased their market impact. Across our countries, taxation, shareholder protection, and the European Union's Market Abuse Directive do not affect significantly the market valuation of repurchases. Our results imply that, ultimately, domestic institutional specificities and reforms play significant roles in the market valuation and popularity of share repurchases

The information content of institutional trades on the London Stock Exchange

We construct a unique data set that includes all reported institutional block trades on the London Stock Exchange and analyze the market reaction to buy and sell trades. We find that the type of investors behind the trade and the combination of the trade's size and the trader's resulting level of ownership are the major determinants of the information effects and the asymmetry between price impacts of buy and sell trades. In particular, large trades undertaken by fund managers, the most active investors in our sample, have strong information content, while, for the remaining trades, we report limited support for the information and the price impact asymmetry hypotheses. These results hold even after accounting for trade complexity and volatility effects in the regressions

The application of multiplex fluorimetric sensor for the analysis of flavonoids content in the medicinal herbs family Asteraceae, Lamiaceae, Rosaceae

BACKGROUND: The aim of our research work was to quantify total flavonoid contents in the leaves of 13 plant species family Asteraceae, 8 representatives of family Lamiaceae and 9 plant species belonging to familyRosaceae, using the multiplex fluorimetric sensor. Fluorescence was measured using optical fluorescence apparatus Multiplex(R) 3 (Force-A, France) for non-destructive flavonoids estimation. The content of total flavonoids was estimated by FLAV index (expressed in relative units), that is deduced from flavonoids UV absorbing properties. RESULTS: Among observed plant species, the highest amount of total flavonoids has been found in leaves ofHelianthus multiflorus (1.65 RU) and Echinops ritro (1.27 RU), Rudbeckia fulgida (1.13 RU) belonging to the family Asteraceae. Lowest flavonoid content has been observed in the leaves of marigold (Calendula officinalis) (0.14 RU) also belonging to family Asteraceae. The highest content of flavonoids among experimental plants of family Rosaceae has been estimated in the leaves of Rosa canina (1.18 RU) and among plant species of family Lamiaceae in the leaves of Coleus blumei (0.90 RU). CONCLUSIONS: This research work was done as pre-screening of flavonoids content in the leaves of plant species belonging to family Asteraceae, Lamiaceae and Rosaceae. Results indicated that statistically significant differences (P > 0.05) in flavonoids content were observed not only between families, but also among individual plant species within one family

International lease accounting reform and economic consequences: the views of UK users and preparers

In response to perceived difficulties with extant lease-accounting standards in operation worldwide, the G4+1 issued a discussion paper which proposes that all leases should be recognized on the balance sheet [ASB (1999). Leases: Implementation of a new approach, discussion paper. London: Accounting Standards Board]. Leasing is now on the active agenda of the IASB. A major difficulty faced by standard setters lies in overcoming the preparer/user lobbying imbalance and obtaining ex ante evidence on the likely impact of regulatory reform. This paper contributes to the ongoing international debate by conducting a questionnaire survey of U.K. users and preparers to assess their views on proposals for lease-accounting reform and on the potential economic consequences of their adoption. The results, based on 132 responses, indicate that both groups accept that there are deficiencies in the current rules, but they do not agree on the way forward and believe that the proposals would lead to significant economic consequences for key parties. The impact on respondents' views of familiarity with the proposals, level of lease usage, and company size, is also examined

The Pre-Kindergarten Learning Enterprise (PKLE)

To meet the challenges that today’s pre-Kindergarten children will face as adults, they need effective development and learning organizations. Together, those organizations form the pre-Kindergarten (pre-K) learning enterprise, whose characteristics and behaviors greatly influence what pre-K children learn and how well they learn it. In this paper, the pre-K learning enterprise is explicitly defined and modeled for the first time and then analyzed through a systems thinking lens using systemigrams and related causal loop diagrams. Defining and modeling the pre-K learning enterprise is itself valuable as a means to understand the various relationships that exist among the identified constituent systems (e.g., home environment, preschool, financial, health care, state, and government) and the stakeholders identified within the enterprise (e.g., parents, educators, health care providers, and policy makers). That value is enhanced through an analysis which reveals the predominant reliance of several key pre-K learning enterprise component systems on the financial system while exposing weak interactions among the three main participating systems (preschools, home environment, and government). Heavy reliance on the financial system in today’s economy reduces the effectiveness of the pre-K learning enterprise. To ease such reliance on the financial system while enhancing key interrelationships, three improvements to the existing enterprise are postulated: (1) enhance the role of parents through better education on child development, learning, health and nutrition and their increased voluntary involvement with preschools, (2) reduce the dependency on the financial system and promote partnerships among preschools, sports facilities, libraries and other learning systems to share resources, and (3) enhance government role through implementation of curriculum standardization, assessment and evaluation, and an effective policy towards mandatory education of low-income children

Taxes, Governance, and Debt Maturity Structure: International Evidence

We provide a cross-country evidence on the impact of corporate and personal income taxes, and corporate governance systems on debt maturity structures and leverage using a comprehensive sample of 212,642 firm-year observations based on a sample of 19,573 firms from 24 OECD countries over the period 1990 to 2015. We find longer debt maturities, higher leverage, and, in a dynamic setting, a greater propensity to decrease short-term debt, in countries with high investor protection and where the potentials for debt tax shields and after-tax return of investors are high. Our results imply that when investors are protected, firms tend to have optimal debt maturities to maximise the gains from tax shields and minimise the tax cost of equity. In contrast, in low protection countries, investors prefer their firms to opt for low debt that is mainly short-term to mitigate the risk-shifting and debt overhang problems even if this entails forgoing the debt tax shields. Our results hold for various robustness checks including the hierarchical linear model specification, which corrects for a number of OLS biases