Patrick Verwijmeren

Shareholders in the Boardroom: Wealth Effects of the SEC’s Proposal to Facilitate Director Nominations

Current attempts to reform financial markets presume that shareholder empowerment benefits shareholders. We investigate the wealth effects associated with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s rule to facilitate director nominations by shareholders. Our results are not in line with shareholder empowerment creating value: The average daily abnormal returns surrounding events that increase (decrease) the probability of the proposal’s passage are significantly negative (positive). Furthermore, given an increase in the probability of the proposal’s passage, firms whose shareholders are more likely to use the rule to nominate directors experience more negative abnormal returns.

Agglomeration Effects and Financial Performance

This study empirically tests the trade-off between the costs and benefits of agglomeration for a large sample of firms. In line with the existing literature, it is found that population and employment density benefit productivity, but increase labour and real estate costs. To test the trade-off of benefits and drawbacks of agglomeration, the analysis focuses on the relation between agglomeration and profitability. For a sample of single-establishment Dutch firms, it is found that on average the costs of settling in an area with a dense spatial distribution of employment outweigh the benefits, an effect that holds for both urbanisation and localisation measures. In general, doubling the employment density will decrease the average return on assets by more than one percentage point.

Convertible Arbitrage Price Pressure and Short-Sale Constraints

Using a sample of 4,148 convertibles issued over 1990–2009 by companies listed in 35 countries, the authors exploited worldwide differences in short-sale constraints to examine whether short selling by convertible arbitrageurs creates downward pressure on convertible issuers’ stock prices. They found that short-sale constraints have a positive effect on issue-date abnormal stock returns, which suggests that a substantial part of the stock price effect of convertible issues is attributable to convertible arbitrageurs. Convertible bonds are securities that can be converted, at the option of the holder, into a fixed number of the issuer’s ordinary shares. Convertible arbitrage hedge funds have played an important role in the convertible bond market, especially since the beginning of the 21st century. These hedge funds combine long positions in convertibles with short positions in the underlying stock. We exploited worldwide differences in short-sale constraints to examine whether convertible arbitrage short selling creates downward pressure on convertible issuers’ stock prices. Because arbitrage hedge funds are unable to execute their hedging strategy in markets that are short-sale constrained, we used the existence of short-sale constraints as a proxy for the presence of convertible arbitrage hedge funds in a market. We hypothesized that convertibles issued by companies listed in countries where short selling is legally restricted are associated with more favorable issue-date stock price effects than are convertibles issued in countries where short selling is allowed and practiced. We tested this hypothesis with a sample of 4,148 convertible bonds issued over 1990–2009 by companies listed in 35 countries. In line with our hypothesis, we found that short-sale constraints have a positive effect on issue-date abnormal stock returns. We further found that this effect is stronger in years with higher hedge fund involvement and for offerings expected to induce more arbitrage short selling. In addition, our study maps the global convertible bond market as completely as permitted by publicly available data sources and offers new insights into the determinants of the negative stock price reaction associated with convertible bond offerings. Previous papers have attributed this negative reaction to the signaling content of convertible bond issues. Our approach allowed us to estimate the magnitude of downward price pressure around convertible bond offerings that is attributable to the actions of convertible arbitrageurs rather than to the negative signal inferred from the convertible bond announcement. Our findings suggest that both academics and practitioners who analyze post-2000 convertible bond announcement effects are likely to overstate the negative announcement effects when they fail to control for the short-sale pressure of convertible bond arbitrageurs. On a more general level, our study suggests that stock price behavior around corporate financing events can be substantially affected by short-selling regulations.

To have a target debt ratio or not: what difference does it make?

The static tradeoff theory of capital structure predicts that firms aim to approach a target debt ratio. The theory provides several firm characteristics that determine this target ratio. In contrast, the pecking order model rejects a target debt ratio, because firms are expected to finance investments subsequently from (internal) equity, debt and (external) equity. A fundamental problem in empirical studies is that having a target debt ratio or not is unobservable from public data. We use survey evidence from 235 Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) to discriminate static tradeoff firms from pecking order firms and relate the responses to public data. For the two sets of firms we estimate standard capital structure models and find that pecking order firms contaminate static tradeoff theory-based estimations.

Learning from Other Firms' Investments: Corporate Governance and Firm Entry

We propose that potential entrants learn about industry conditions from observing the investment behavior of established firms. Strong corporate governance at established firms facilitates learning spillovers. Empirically, we find that industries experience more entry if incumbent firms invest more. The sensitivity of entry to investment activity is much higher in industries with strong corporate governance. Moreover, consistent with the learning hypothesis, the effects are strongest for industries with less informative stock prices and when exposure to industry-level uncertainty is high.

The External Financing of Investment

Investment characteristics and the form of external financing are linked. Factor analysis indicates that the principal determinant of the financing choice is whether an investment’s payoffs can be described as a hit or miss. Hit-or-miss investments are more likely to be equity financed. Equity also becomes more common the longer the time until an investment produces positive payoffs. Debt financing is more likely for investments that are both tangible and non-unique. For R&D-like investments, equity and bank debt financing are more likely than non-bank debt financing. Convertible securities link to uncertain investment lives and are therefore useful for sequential financing.

Wealth Effects of Seasoned Equity Offerings: A Meta-Analysis: Wealth Effects of Seasoned Equity Offerings

We use meta-analysis to review studies on announcement effects associated with seasoned equity offerings. Our sample includes 168 studies from 32 leading finance journals and SSRN working papers. The studies cover different countries, but the U.S. is particularly well-represented with 120 studies. We find a significantly mean cumulative abnormal return of -1.13%. Abnormal returns are more negative for equity issues by U.S. companies and for non-U.S. rights issues. In addition, wealth effects are more negative when there is insider trading before an equity issue, when the proceeds are used for debt reduction, and for issues by dividend-paying companies. All else equal, published papers report more negative wealth effects than working papers. We identify important avenues for future research.

A Run-Down of Merger Target Run-Ups

Correspondence MarieDutordoir, AllianceManchesterBusiness School,University ofManchester,ManchesterM139PL,UK. Email:marie.dutordoir@mbs.ac.uk Abstract We provide evidence of a drastic drop in stock run-ups of U.S. target firms preceding merger and acquisition (M&A) announcements over the past decades. The median target run-up declines from approximately 10% in the 1980s to 2% after 2010. The trend in target run-ups cannot be fully explained by deal or firm characteristics associated with deal anticipation. However, it disappears after controlling for changes in the strength of U.S. insider trading regulation over the research period. Further analyses corroborate our conclusion that more stringent insider trading regulation is the most likely explanation for the reduction in target run-ups.

Earnings Expectations and the Dispersion Anomaly

This study presents evidence suggesting that investors do not fully unravel predictable pessimism in sell-side analysts’ earnings forecasts. We show that measures of prior consensus and individual analyst forecast pessimism are predictive of both the sign of firms’ earnings surprises and the stock returns around earnings announcements. That is, we find that firms with a relatively high probability of forecast pessimism experience significantly higher announcement returns than those with a low probability. Importantly, we show these findings are driven by predictable pessimism in analysts’ short-term forecasts as opposed to optimism in their longer-term forecasts. We further find that this mispricing is related to the difficulty investors have in identifying differences in expected forecast pessimism. Overall, we conclude that market prices do not fully reflect the conditional probability that a firm meets or beats earnings expectations as a result of analysts’ pessimistically biased short-term forecasts.