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Hedge funds in M&A deals: Is there exploitation of insider information?

Author

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  • Dai, Rui
  • Massoud, Nadia
  • Nandy, Debarshi K.
  • Saunders, Anthony

Abstract

This paper investigates trading patterns in target and acquirer firms prior to public announcement of M&A deals, a corporate event in which group based co-offence has been anecdotally documented. Our analysis differentiates whether such trading is primarily conducted by hedge funds with short-term investment horizons as opposed to other short horizon investors or hedge funds and institutional investors with long-term horizons, in both the equity and derivatives markets. Our results are consistent with exploitation of M&A deal related information prior to the deal's public announcement. In particular we find that the greater the likelihood of insider information leakage, the greater the short-term hedge fund holdings. We consider several alternative explanations, such as those related to the short-term hedge fund's skill in identifying profitable trades' ex-ante; our results seem inconsistent with such alternative explanations.

Suggested Citation

  • Dai, Rui & Massoud, Nadia & Nandy, Debarshi K. & Saunders, Anthony, 2017. "Hedge funds in M&A deals: Is there exploitation of insider information?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 23-45.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:corfin:v:47:y:2017:i:c:p:23-45
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2017.08.001
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    4. Aleksanyan, Mark & Danbolt, Jo & Siganos, Antonios & Wu, Betty (H.T.), 2022. "I only fear when I hear: How media affects insider trading in takeover targets," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 318-342.
    5. Papathanasiou, Spyros & Vasiliou, Dimitrios & Magoutas, Anastasios & Koutsokostas, Drosos, 2022. "Do hedge and merger arbitrage funds actually hedge? A time-varying volatility spillover approach," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 44(C).
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Short-term hedge funds; Information leakage; Insider information; Merger and acquisitions; Short-selling; Long target holdings;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • G30 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - General
    • G34 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Mergers; Acquisitions; Restructuring; Corporate Governance

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