IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/vuw/vuwcsr/19194.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Insightful Insiders? Insider Trading and Stock Return Around Debt Covenant Violation Disclosures

Author

Listed:
  • Lont, David
  • Griffin, Paul
  • McClune, Kate

Abstract

This paper documents significant trading by insiders around a first-time debt covenant violation disclosure in an SEC filing and is interesting from a research and regulatory standpoint because of three considerations - delay and relative infrequency of new covenant violation disclosures lack of attention to disclosure issues by regulators and dearth of research. Importantly we find a lead relation between net insider selling in the 12 months before a debt covenant violation disclosure and investors' negative returns and net insider buying up to 12 months after disclosure and investors' positive returns. This relation is robust to the presence of other information. These results support our contention that insiders' trades around a covenant violation disclosure may benefit from an information advantage unavailable to other market participants. The aggregate return to insiders - the sum of the losses avoided from selling and the gains from buying - approaches almost two billion dollars over an eight-year study period.

Suggested Citation

  • Lont, David & Griffin, Paul & McClune, Kate, 2011. "Insightful Insiders? Insider Trading and Stock Return Around Debt Covenant Violation Disclosures," Working Paper Series 19194, Victoria University of Wellington, The New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation.
    • Handle: RePEc:vuw:vuwcsr:19194
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ir.wgtn.ac.nz/handle/123456789/19194
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mitchell, Mark L & Stafford, Erik, 2000. "Managerial Decisions and Long-Term Stock Price Performance," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 73(3), pages 287-329, July.
    2. Huddart, Steven & Ke, Bin & Shi, Charles, 2007. "Jeopardy, non-public information, and insider trading around SEC 10-K and 10-Q filings," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 3-36, March.
    3. Lakonishok, Josef & Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W., 1992. "The impact of institutional trading on stock prices," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 23-43, August.
    4. Seyhun, H. Nejat, 1986. "Insiders' profits, costs of trading, and market efficiency," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 189-212, June.
    5. 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.
    6. Sweeney, Amy Patricia, 1994. "Debt-covenant violations and managers' accounting responses," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 281-308, May.
    7. John Elliott & Dale Morse & Gordon Richardson, 1984. "The Association between Insider Trading and Information Announcements," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 15(4), pages 521-536, Winter.
    8. 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.
    9. Robert M. Bushman & Abbie J. Smith & Regina Wittenberg‐Moerman, 2010. "Price Discovery and Dissemination of Private Information by Loan Syndicate Participants," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(5), pages 921-972, December.
    10. Henock Louis & Amy X. Sun & Hal White, 2010. "Insider Trading after Repurchase Tender Offer Announcements: Timing versus Informed Trading," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 39(1), pages 301-322, March.
    11. Nini, Greg & Smith, David C. & Sufi, Amir, 2009. "Creditor control rights and firm investment policy," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(3), pages 400-420, June.
    12. Lakonishok, Josef & Lee, Inmoo, 2001. "Are Insider Trades Informative?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 14(1), pages 79-111.
    13. Cem Demiroglu & Christopher M. James, 2010. "The Information Content of Bank Loan Covenants," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(10), pages 3700-3737, October.
    14. 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.
    15. 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.
    16. Seyhun, H Nejat, 1990. "Do Bidder Managers Knowingly Pay Too Much for Target Firms?," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 63(4), pages 439-464, October.
    17. Jonathan M. Karpoff & Daniel Lee, 1991. "Insider Trading Before New Issue Announcements," Financial Management, Financial Management Association, vol. 20(1), Spring.
    18. Ilia D. Dichev & Douglas J. Skinner, 2002. "Large–Sample Evidence on the Debt Covenant Hypothesis," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(4), pages 1091-1123, September.
    19. Piotroski, Joseph D. & Roulstone, Darren T., 2005. "Do insider trades reflect both contrarian beliefs and superior knowledge about future cash flow realizations?," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 55-81, February.
    20. Givoly, Dan & Palmon, Dan, 1985. "Insider Trading and the Exploitation of Inside Information: Some Empirical Evidence," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 58(1), pages 69-87, January.
    21. Michael R. Roberts & Amir Sufi, 2009. "Control Rights and Capital Structure: An Empirical Investigation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(4), pages 1657-1695, August.
    22. Mathias Dewatripont & Jean Tirole, 1994. "A Theory of Debt and Equity: Diversity of Securities and Manager-Shareholder Congruence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 109(4), pages 1027-1054.
    23. Carter, ME & Soo, BS, 1999. "The relevance of Form 8-K reports," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(1), pages 119-132.
    24. Lee, D Scott & Mikkelson, Wayne H & Partch, M Megan, 1992. "Managers' Trading around Stock Repurchases," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(5), pages 1947-1961, December.
    25. Lustgarten, Steven & Mande, Vivek, 1995. "Financial analysts' earnings forecasts and insider trading," Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 14(3), pages 233-261.
    26. Messod D. Beneish & Eric Press, 1995. "Interrelation Among Events of Default," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 12(1), pages 57-84, September.
    27. John, Kose & Lang, Larry H P, 1991. "Insider Trading around Dividend Announcements: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(4), pages 1361-1389, September.
    28. Seyhun, H Nejat & Bradley, Michael, 1997. "Corporate Bankruptcy and Insider Trading," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 70(2), pages 189-216, April.
    29. Penman, Stephen H, 1982. "Insider Trading and the Dissemination of Firms' Forecast Information," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 55(4), pages 479-503, October.
    30. Kolasinski, Adam & Li, Xu, 2010. "Are corporate managers savvy about their stock price? Evidence from insider trading after earnings announcements," Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 27-44, January.
    31. Alok Kumar & Charles M.C. Lee, 2006. "Retail Investor Sentiment and Return Comovements," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(5), pages 2451-2486, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. repec:vuw:vuwscr:19194 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Paul A. Griffin & David H. Lont & Kate McClune, 2014. "Insightful Insiders? Insider Trading and Stock Return around Debt Covenant Violation Disclosures," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 50(2), pages 117-145, June.
    3. Aier, Jagadison K., 2013. "Insider trading in loss firms," Advances in accounting, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 12-26.
    4. Huddart, Steven & Ke, Bin & Shi, Charles, 2007. "Jeopardy, non-public information, and insider trading around SEC 10-K and 10-Q filings," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 3-36, March.
    5. 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.
    6. Fei Leng & Kevin Zhao, 2014. "Insider trading around open-market share repurchases," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 38(3), pages 461-491, July.
    7. 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.
    8. Lo, Keng-Hsin & Wang, Kehluh & Liao, Tsai-Ling, 2006. "Insider transfer trading of banking companies around exchange listing," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 215-234, April.
    9. Yin-Hua Yeh & Pei-Gi Shu & Ya-Wei Yang, 2016. "How Insiders’ Personal Incentives and Timeliness of Information Revelation are Related to Their Sales Timing," Review of Pacific Basin Financial Markets and Policies (RPBFMP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 19(02), pages 1-26, June.
    10. Tavakoli, Manouchehr & McMillan, David & McKnight, Phillip J., 2012. "Insider trading and stock prices," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 254-266.
    11. 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.
    12. 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.
    13. Agrawal, Anup & Nasser, Tareque, 2012. "Insider trading in takeover targets," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 598-625.
    14. Guanming He, 2023. "How do insider trading incentives shape nonfinancial disclosures? Evidence from product and business expansion disclosures," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 60(1), pages 147-194, January.
    15. Guanming He & Helen Mengbing Ren & Richard Taffler, 2021. "Do corporate insiders trade on future stock price crash risk?," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 56(4), pages 1561-1591, May.
    16. Dean Katselas, 2020. "Strategic insider trading around earnings announcements in Australia," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 60(4), pages 3709-3741, December.
    17. Dennis D. Malliouris & Alphons T. Vermorken & Maximilian A.M. Vermorken, 2022. "Aggregate insider trading and future market returns in the United States, Europe, and Asia," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(1), pages 802-821, January.
    18. Agrawal, Anup & Cooper, Tommy, 2015. "Insider trading before accounting scandals," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 169-190.
    19. Cziraki, Peter & Lyandres, Evgeny & Michaely, Roni, 2021. "What do insiders know? Evidence from insider trading around share repurchases and SEOs," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    20. Laurel Franzen & Xu Li & Oktay Urcan & Mark E. Vargus, 2014. "The Market Response To Insider Sales Of Restricted Stock Versus Unrestricted Stock," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 37(1), pages 99-118, February.
    21. Jonathan A. Milian, 2016. "Insider sales based on short-term earnings information," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 47(1), pages 109-128, July.

    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:vuw:vuwcsr:19194. 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: Library Technology Services (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fcvuwnz.html .

    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.