0000000000212694

AUTHOR

C. José García

Equity Issues in the Spanish Stock Market: Windows of Opportunity, Earnings Management or Market Timing?

We investigate whether the market sentiment and/or the specific operating performance of firms that conducted an equity issue on the Spanish stock market during the period 1993-2000 are related to the long-run stock-return underperformance in the year following the issue of small and medium firms. Our results reveal that equity issues were conducted by large firms just when the market showed optimistic expectations towards large firms in general. This overoptimism towards large issue firms was related to the 1990s technology boom in the case of initial public offerings (IPO), but we detect earnings management by large firms that conducted a seasoned equity offering (SEO). In this context, s…

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Illiquidity Risk and the Long-Run Underperformance of Seasoned Equity Issues in the Spanish Market

This paper presents new evidence on potential risk-based explanations for the low SEO returns in the year after the issue. Specifically, we analyse whether the issue leads to a long-term higher stock liquidity that implies that SEO stocks have lower expected return due to lower exposure to liquidity risk factor. Therefore, we investigate if Spanish SEO firms experience significant changes in long-term liquidity after the issue. Results suggest that SEO-firm liquidity increases significantly in the year after the issue. Finally, we explore the post-performance of SEO firms explicitly accounting for liquidity risk. In particular, we employ the three factor model by Fama and French (1993) exte…

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El componente de selección adversa de la horquilla de precios cotizada: una revisión de los modelos de estimación

-Jose.E.Farinos@uv.es -Ana.M.Ibanez@uv.es Una de las principales preocupaciones en el área de la microestructura del mercado ha sido la estimación de los componentes no observables de la horquilla de precios a partir de las series de datos que proporcionan los mercados financieros, despertando quizá un mayor interés el de selección adversa por la implicaciones que supone la existencia del mismo. Esto ha provocado el desarrollo de numerosos modelos empíricos que, basándose en las propiedades estadísticas de las series de precios, proporcionan dichas estimaciones. La mayor disponibilidad de datos existentes en los mercados ha permitido el desarrollo en los últimos años de modelos basados en t…

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Options and Accounting Information: Empirical Evidence in Stock and Derivative Markets

This study investigates the informational role of options trading in the price discovery process around the dissemination of accounting information, specifically annual and quarterly earnings announcements. Firstly, we examine the effect of options markets by analyzing stock market reaction to earnings news conditional on the availability of options markets. Secondly, we examine options-trading activity around the release of earnings news. Results show that when options trading is available, the options market enhances the price efficiency of equity markets. Moreover, the dissemination of earnings news is associated with significant unusual activity in the options market due to informed tra…

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El papel de la liquidez en el efecto de la nueva información. El caso de Latibex

En 1999 se creó en España el mercado Latibex destinado a la contratación en euros de valores de las principales empresas latinoamericanas. Desde su creación este mercado se ha caracterizado por tener una menor actividad negociadora y menor liquidez que la existente en los mercados latinoamericanos de origen. El objetivo del trabajo es analizar si el efecto de la información trasmitida por el anuncio de ganancias trimestrales es diferente en ambos mercados, considerando los diferentes niveles de liquidez y actividad negociadora que presentan ambos mercados.Los resultados obtenidos confirman que el anuncio de ganancias es una información relevante para el valor de la empresa. Sin embargo, es …

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Problemas en la estimación y en el contraste de los rendimientos anormales a largo plazo: Estado de la cuestión

-Jose.E.Farinos@uv.es -Ana.M.Ibanez@uv.es El paradigma de la eficiencia ha sido puesto en entredicho en las últimas décadas como consecuencia de la obtención de rendimientos anormales, estadística y económicamente significativos, durante amplios periodos de tiempo tras algunas importantes decisiones empresariales. No obstante, los problemas conceptuales y estadísticos que presenta la medición y contrastación de los rendimientos anormales a largo plazo ha supuesto que la evidencia obtenida pase a calificarse como anomalía. Dada la escasa proliferación de este tipo de estudios en nuestro mercado y el desafortunado desarrollo de algunos de los existentes, en este trabajo presentamos estos prob…

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Information processing in the stock market around anticipated accounting information: earnings release

Earnings announcements are anticipated events with significant price impacts. This fact can motivate informed traders to trade on private information and liquidity providers to reduce liquidity in order to be careful about insider trading. In this paper, we examine the effect of earnings announcements on information asymmetry. Specifically, we investigate whether liquidity suppliers value the possibility of trading with informed agents and whether market behaviour reflects this. To achieve this objective, we take into account the sign of the surprise, the quarter of the announcement, the quantity of previous information and the quality of the information released. One of the main results of…

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Does Methodology Determine the Identification of Stock Split Motivations?: Evidence from Spain

This study investigates the robustness of the results obtained for the possible motivations for firms listed on the Spanish stock market to execute a stock split using different methodologies. Although surveys from executives emphasize the use of stock splits as a way to increase the liquidity of shares, the empirical evidence is not conclusive. Our results, taken from the logit regression, the Kaplan-Meier method, the Cox regression and the automatic interaction detection, all support the hypotheses of signalling and optimal range.

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Is the long-run underperformance of seasoned equity issues irrational? Evidence from Spain

Abstract We investigate if the long-run underperformance in the year after the issue of a sample of Spanish SEO firms is related to behavioural biases that lead investors to slowly adjust their pre-issue overoptimism. We also examine the existence of arbitrage costs that preclude mispricing from being corrected rapidly by sophisticated investors who act as arbitrageurs. Our findings support the contention that small SEO firms are overpriced at the time of the issue and suggest that their post-underperformance is related to arbitrage costs, where transaction costs play an important role although holding costs do not.

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Information and Investor Behavior Surrounding Earnings Announcements

Preliminary version The goal of this paper is to analyze the impact of annual earnings announcements on the market through the order flow data in addition to the usual transaction data. In this respect, examining order flow data can potentially reveal valuable information which is not available from transaction data. In fact, the data allow us to test hypotheses about asymmetric information and investor behavior and to test if the behavior varies with investor sophistication. In addition, the paper tries to identify the determinants of the impact on a firm's value using assumptions about investor behavior.

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Corporate board and default risk of financial firms

This paper analyses the impact of corporate board structure on default risk of European banking firms. We focus on four core aspects of boards that have been addressed in Directive 2013/36/ EU to strengthen the corporate governance of banks: the size of boards, their independence, the participation of female directors and CEO duality. We employ panel data analysis to study the 109 European listed banks between 2002 and 2019. Default risk is estimated by Merton’s (1974) distance to default. We take into account the presence of unobservable heterogeneity, simultaneity and dynamic endogeneity and estimate the model using the dynamic difference and dynamic system GMM methodologies. The results …

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Female directors, capital structure, and financial distress

Abstract The composition of the board of directors is highly relevant to a firm’s capital structure and likelihood of financial distress. This study builds on the complementary proposals of agency theory and gender theories based on gender-differential behavior. We examine whether the gender diversity of the board affects firms’ capital structure (leverage, cost of debt, and debt maturity) and likelihood of bankruptcy. For a sample of European firms over the period 2002 to 2019, we find that the percentage of women directors is the most influential board characteristic in terms of capital structure decisions. This characteristic is negatively related to leverage, cost of debt, and debt matu…

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Operating and stock market performance of state-owned enterprise privatizations: The Spanish experience

Abstract We investigate the operating and stock market performance of Spanish state-owned enterprises (SOEs) privatized through public share issue offerings (SIPs) from 1990 to 2001, when the last SIP was conducted. We compare the performance of SOEs and privately-owned firms. We find significant operating improvements in Spanish SOEs after the privatization. Specifically, they show significant increases in income efficiency, real sales and employment. Spanish governments tried to minimize the foregone proceeds when selling SOE shares and underpriced them lower than private firms. We relate these results with the pressure of the Maastricht Treaty fiscal criteria, as well as lower informatio…

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The Informational Role of Thin Options Markets: Empirical Evidence of the Spanish Case (El Papel Informativo De Los Mercados De Opciones Estrechos: Evidencia Empprica Del Caso Espaaol)

English Abstract: This study investigates the informational role of thin options markets, specifically the Spanish options market. Firstly, we examine the effect of options markets by analysing stock market reaction to earnings news, conditional on the availability of options markets. Secondly, we examine options-trading activity before the release of earnings news (including the announcement period). Results show that the impact on prices before the earnings release is significantly bigger when options trading is available. Moreover, the dissemination of earnings news is associated with significant unusual activity in the options market due to informed trading, especially when the earnings…

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Insider Trading and Market Behaviour Around Takeover Announcements in the Spanish Market

As microstructure models assume informational asymmetries among investors, the possibility of insider trading is a sound reason for liquidity suppliers to increase the bid-ask spread. In this way, the tested effect that takeover announcements have on target firm returns becomes a strong motive for trading with insider information. In this paper we firstly investigate whether liquidity suppliers value the possibility of trading with informed agents in this sort of event. We analyse the adverse selection cost from bid-ask spread behaviour around takeover announcements. We find that liquidity suppliers enlarge adverse selection cost suggesting that they value the possibility of facing to insid…

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Corporate entrepreneurship and governance: Mergers and acquisitions in Europe

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are a form of corporate entrepreneurship involving strategic decisions that require discussion and approval by the board of directors of the acquiring firm. We focus on board attributes to analyze the entrepreneurial function of the board of directors and its involvement in corporate entrepreneurship. Building on different theories (agency theory, resource dependence theory, stewardship theory, and stakeholder theory), we examine whether board composition affects the number of acquisitions, the risk involved in bids, and the creation of value for the acquirer's shareholders. For a sample of European firms over the period 2002 to 2020, we find that board size a…

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