IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/glofin/v44y2020ics1044028318300942.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The information content of director trading: Evidence from acquisition announcements in Australia

Author

Listed:
  • Hossain, Md Mosharraf
  • Heaney, Richard
  • Yu, Jing

Abstract

In response to the long-standing debate about the information content of director trading, this study investigates the implications of director stock trading before an acquisition announcement by the company. Using a sample of 1249 acquisition announcements made by Australian acquiring firms between 2003 and 2012, we find that the stocks of acquiring firms with net director sales tend to underperform those of acquiring firms with net director purchases or with no director trades. This evidence supports the notion that director trading conveys useful information about the quality of subsequent acquisitions. Further, the informational effect of net director sales is most pronounced for acquisitions where the method of payment is stock, implying that the acquiring firm's stock may be overvalued.

Suggested Citation

  • Hossain, Md Mosharraf & Heaney, Richard & Yu, Jing, 2020. "The information content of director trading: Evidence from acquisition announcements in Australia," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 44(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:glofin:v:44:y:2020:i:c:s1044028318300942
    DOI: 10.1016/j.gfj.2018.09.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1044028318300942
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.gfj.2018.09.001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. R. Richardson Pettit & P.C. Venkatesh, 1995. "Insider Trading and Long-Run Return Performance," Financial Management, Financial Management Association, vol. 24(2), Summer.
    2. Shams, Syed M.M. & Gunasekarage, Abeyratna & Colombage, Sisira R.N., 2013. "Does the organisational form of the target influence market reaction to acquisition announcements? Australian evidence," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 24(C), pages 89-108.
    3. Seyhun, H Nejat, 1988. "The Information Content of Aggregate Insider Trading," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 61(1), pages 1-24, January.
    4. Akbulut, Mehmet E., 2013. "Do Overvaluation-Driven Stock Acquisitions Really Benefit Acquirer Shareholders?," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 48(4), pages 1025-1055, August.
    5. Kenneth M. Lehn & Mengxin Zhao, 2006. "CEO Turnover after Acquisitions: Are Bad Bidders Fired?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(4), pages 1759-1811, August.
    6. Utpal Bhattacharya & Hazem Daouk, 2002. "The World Price of Insider Trading," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(1), pages 75-108, February.
    7. Ke, Bin & Huddart, Steven & Petroni, Kathy, 2003. "What insiders know about future earnings and how they use it: Evidence from insider trades," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 315-346, August.
    8. Cesare Fracassi & Geoffrey Tate, 2012. "External Networking and Internal Firm Governance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(1), pages 153-194, February.
    9. Seyhun, H. Nejat, 1986. "Insiders' profits, costs of trading, and market efficiency," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 189-212, June.
    10. Jiang, Xiaoquan & Zaman, Mir A., 2010. "Aggregate insider trading: Contrarian beliefs or superior information?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(6), pages 1225-1236, June.
    11. Jose M. Marin & Jacques P. Olivier, 2008. "The Dog That Did Not Bark: Insider Trading and Crashes," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(5), pages 2429-2476, October.
    12. Seyhun, H Nejat, 1992. "The Effectiveness of the Insider-Trading Sanctions," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 35(1), pages 149-182, April.
    13. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W., 2003. "Stock market driven acquisitions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(3), pages 295-311, December.
    14. Meulbroek, Lisa K, 1992. "An Empirical Analysis of Illegal Insider Trading," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(5), pages 1661-1699, December.
    15. Agrawal, Anup & Nasser, Tareque, 2012. "Insider trading in takeover targets," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 598-625.
    16. Alan Gregory & John Matatko & Ian Tonks, 1997. "Detecting Information from Directors' Trades: Signal Definition and Variable Size Effects," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(3), pages 309-342, April.
    17. M. Mark Walker, 2000. "Corporate Takeovers, Strategic Objectives and Acquring Firm Shareholder Wealth," Financial Management, Financial Management Association, vol. 29(1), Spring.
    18. Robert B. Durand & Manapon Limkriangkrai & Gary Smith, 2006. "In America's thrall: the effects of the US market and US security characteristics on Australian stock returns," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 46(4), pages 577-604, December.
    19. Opler, Tim C & Titman, Sheridan, 1994. "Financial Distress and Corporate Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(3), pages 1015-1040, July.
    20. Philip Hamill & Philip McIlkenny & Kwaku Opong, 2002. "Directors' Share Dealings and Company Financial Performance," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 6(3), pages 215-234, September.
    21. Alan Gregory & John Matatko & Ian Tonks, 1997. "Detecting Information from Directors' Trades: Signal Definition and Variable Size Effects," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(3), pages 309-342, April.
    22. Clive Gaunt, 2004. "Size and book to market effects and the Fama French three factor asset pricing model: evidence from the Australian stockmarket," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 44(1), pages 27-44, March.
    23. Damodaran, Aswath & Liu, Crocker H, 1993. "Insider Trading as a Signal of Private Information," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 6(1), pages 79-119.
    24. John A. Doukas & Dimitris Petmezas, 2007. "Acquisitions, Overconfident Managers and Self‐attribution Bias," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 13(3), pages 531-577, June.
    25. Moeller, Sara B. & Schlingemann, Frederik P. & Stulz, Rene M., 2004. "Firm size and the gains from acquisitions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 201-228, August.
    26. Robert J. Bianchi & Michael E. Drew & Eduardo Roca & Timothy Whittaker, 2017. "Risk factors in Australian bond returns," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 57(2), pages 373-400, June.
    27. Ismail, Ahmad, 2008. "Which acquirers gain more, single or multiple? Recent evidence from the USA market," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 72-84.
    28. Harford, Jarrad & Humphery-Jenner, Mark & Powell, Ronan, 2012. "The sources of value destruction in acquisitions by entrenched managers," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(2), pages 247-261.
    29. Finnerty, Joseph E, 1976. "Insiders and Market Efficiency," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 31(4), pages 1141-1148, September.
    30. Ronald W. Masulis & Cong Wang & Fei Xie, 2007. "Corporate Governance and Acquirer Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(4), pages 1851-1889, August.
    31. Philip Gharghori & Ronald Lee & Madhu Veeraraghavan, 2009. "Anomalies and stock returns: Australian evidence," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 49(3), pages 555-576, September.
    32. Lakonishok, Josef & Lee, Inmoo, 2001. "Are Insider Trades Informative?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 14(1), pages 79-111.
    33. Asquith, Paul & Bruner, Robert F. & Mullins, David Jr., 1983. "The gains to bidding firms from merger," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1-4), pages 121-139, April.
    34. Leslie A. Jeng & Andrew Metrick & Richard Zeckhauser, 2003. "Estimating the Returns to Insider Trading: A Performance-Evaluation Perspective," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 85(2), pages 453-471, May.
    35. H. Nejat Seyhun, 1992. "Why Does Aggregate Insider Trading Predict Future Stock Returns?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(4), pages 1303-1331.
    36. Travlos, Nickolaos G, 1987. "Corporate Takeover Bids, Methods of Payment, and Bidding Firms' Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 42(4), pages 943-963, September.
    37. Campello, Murillo, 2006. "Debt financing: Does it boost or hurt firm performance in product markets?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(1), pages 135-172, October.
    38. Jarrad Harford & Kai Li, 2007. "Decoupling CEO Wealth and Firm Performance: The Case of Acquiring CEOs," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(2), pages 917-949, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hossain, Md Mosharraf & Pham, Man Duy (Marty) & Islam, Nahid, 2021. "The performance and motivation of serial acquisitions: Evidence from Australia," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Suk, Inho & Wang, Mengmeng, 2021. "Does target firm insider trading signal the target's synergy potential in mergers and acquisitions?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(3), pages 1155-1185.
    2. Abu Chowdhury & Sabur Mollah & Mir A. Zaman, 2018. "What Motivates CEO and CFO Trading – Contrarian Beliefs or Superior Information?," Working Papers 2018-10, Swansea University, School of Management.
    3. Adriana Korczak & Piotr Korczak & Meziane Lasfer, 2010. "To Trade or Not to Trade: The Strategic Trading of Insiders around News Announcements," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(3‐4), pages 369-407, April.
    4. Luke M. Bennett & Wei Hu, 2023. "Filtration enlargement‐based time series forecast in view of insider trading," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(1), pages 112-140, February.
    5. Katselas, Dean, 2018. "Insider trading in Australia: Contrarianism and future performance," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 112-128.
    6. Adriana Korczak & Piotr Korczak & Meziane Lasfer, 2010. "To Trade or Not to Trade: The Strategic Trading of Insiders around News Announcements," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(3‐4), pages 369-407, April.
    7. Renneboog, Luc & Vansteenkiste, Cara, 2019. "Failure and success in mergers and acquisitions," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 650-699.
    8. Shams, Syed M.M. & Duong, Huu Nhan & Singh, Harminder, 2016. "Information content of directors' trading around acquisitions," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 177-193.
    9. Michael Firth & T. Y. Leung & Oliver M. Rui, 2011. "Insider Trading in Hong Kong: Tests of Stock Returns and Trading Frequency," Review of Pacific Basin Financial Markets and Policies (RPBFMP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 14(03), pages 505-533.
    10. Foley, Sean & Kwan, Amy & McInish, Thomas H. & Philip, Richard, 2016. "Director discretion and insider trading profitability," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 28-43.
    11. Foley, Sean & Kwan, Amy & McInish, Thomas H. & Philip, Richard, 2017. "Reprint of Director discretion and insider trading profitability," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 52-67.
    12. Biggerstaff, Lee & Cicero, David & Wintoki, M. Babajide, 2020. "Insider trading patterns," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    13. George P. Gao & Qingzhong Ma & David T. Ng & Ying Wu, 2022. "The Sound of Silence: What Do We Know When Insiders Do Not Trade?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(7), pages 4835-4857, July.
    14. Ozlem Akin & Nicholas S. Coleman & Christian Fons-Rosen & José-Luis Peydró, 2016. "Political Connections: Evidence From Insider Trading Around TARP," Working Papers 935, Barcelona School of Economics.
    15. Yim, Soojin, 2013. "The acquisitiveness of youth: CEO age and acquisition behavior," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(1), pages 250-273.
    16. Ozlem Akin & Nicholas S. Coleman & Christian Fons‐Rosen & José‐Luis Peydró, 2021. "Political connections and informed trading: Evidence from TARP," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 50(3), pages 619-644, September.
    17. Lambe, Brendan J., 2016. "An unreliable canary: Insider trading, the cash flow hypothesis and the financial crisis," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 151-158.
    18. Semih Tartaroglu & Michael Imhof, 2017. "Insider trading and response to earnings announcements: the impact of accelerated disclosure requirements," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 49(2), pages 315-336, August.
    19. Sadok El Ghoul & Omrane Guedhami & Robert Nash & He (Helen) Wang, 2022. "Economic policy uncertainty and insider trading," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 45(4), pages 817-854, December.
    20. El-Khatib, Rwan & Fogel, Kathy & Jandik, Tomas, 2015. "CEO network centrality and merger performance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(2), pages 349-382.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Director trading; Mergers and acquisitions;

    JEL classification:

    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
    • G34 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Mergers; Acquisitions; Restructuring; Corporate Governance

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:glofin:v:44:y:2020:i:c:s1044028318300942. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/620162 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.