This thesis investigates the impact of the reform of the split share structure on the Chinese capital market. It adopts an event study methodology to examine the share price performance around the announcements of the reform and its predicted determinants, the type and level of consideration by using a sample of the top 300 companies listed in the combined Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) and Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE). I find the three-day cumulative abnormal returns (CAR) to be negative and significant around government announcement of the reform on 29 April 2005, but the three-day CAR around company???s announcement of the reform to be positive and significant. I attribute this change of sentiment by the market to the release of information about the reform process concerning features such as type and level of consideration. I also regress the company???s CAR on the type and level of consideration and find evidence to suggest that type of consideration matters, where investors prefer payment of shares from capital reserves or retained profits, cash, warrants or any combination of these methods as opposed to payment of shares from non-tradable shareholders. However, I observe no relation between level of consideration and CAR. I interpret this reaction to be that investors perceive that the consideration level is fair and reasonable based on the company???s financial and operating conditions. These results imply that the reform of the split share structure exerts a positive impact on a company???s share price and the extent of impact is a function of the type of consideration.

Bakgrund: Det primära syftet med ett kreditbetyg är att tillhandahålla information till kreditgivare och investerare angående ett företags återbetalningsförmåga. Kreditbetyget baseras både på publik och privat information och bör därför vid publicering påverka priserna på både kreditmarknaden samt aktiemarknaden under förutsättning att dessa är semieffektiva marknader. Syfte: Syftet är att studera hur aktiekurserna för samtliga företag på Stockholmsbörsen, som erhåller kreditbetyg från S&P, påverkas vid en förändring av företagets kreditbetyg samt outlook. Genomförande: Uppsatsens syfte besvaras genom att undersöka aktieavkastningen i samband med publiceringen av ett förändrat kreditbetyg. Vi har använt oss utav en event study för att isolera och testa eventuell abnorm avkastning. Slutsatser: Av de totala antal tester som vi har utfört finner vi att endast en bråkdel av dessa är signifikanta på 10 % eller lägre. För att med säkerhet fastställa att ett förändrat kreditbetyg påverkar aktieavkastning hade en signifikant abnorm avkastning på 1 % nivå önskats för en majoritet av testerna. Således finner vi inte några starka bevis för att en förändring av kreditbetyg påverkar aktiekurser på den svenska marknaden. Detta indikerar att de svenska företagen betalar för en tjänst som aktiemarknaden inte värdesätter.

The study proceeds as follows: section 2 provides an overview of the historical context surrounding the political environment in 1901; section 3 summarizes existing work addressing the relationship between wealth and political influence; section 4 discusses the data used in the study; section 5 presents an empirical analysis; section 6summarizes and discusses the results of the analysis; and section 7 provides concluding remarks.

Blockbuster and Netflix are two firms in the home video rental market that experienced vastly different outcomes. Netflix vastly increased its firm value while Blockbuster lost its dominant market position and slid into bankruptcy. This paper examines the strategies pursued by Blockbuster and Netflix and the impact these strategies had on firm value. This paper finds that on average Blockbuster’s strategies did not have a significant impact on its firm value while Netflix’s strategies increased its firm value. Specifically, Netflix’s strategies in the areas of service improvement and promotional activity created the most value. The strategies each firm pursued in product line expansion provided value for Blockbuster but reduced value for Netflix.

Previous empirical analyses have concluded that political events can have significant linkages with stock returns. Using Brown & Warner’s (1984) OLS market model, I examine the effect of political disruptions in the 2010-2011 Arab uprisings on major stock indices of Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Dubai and London. My analysis finds mostly negative abnormal returns, highly statistically significant relative to the S&P 500, associated with many key events between December 1st, 2010 and December 1st, 2011. My findings suggest that the loss of investor wealth can be attributed to dramatic regime changes and large scale protests during that time period.

The UK competition authorities are responsible for regulating company mergers that were originally considered to have adverse effects that were “against the public interest”, or presently that could result in a “substantial lessening of competition”. The research in this thesis examines wider economic side effects of this regulatory policy that fall outside the remit of the competition authorities. Data on 63 merger cases that were subject to the merger regulatory process by the UK competition authorities between 1989 and 2002 are studied for effects on two economic aspects, shareholder value and managers’ motivations to undertake mergers. Some previous studies have suggested that competition regimes can destroy shareholder value. The research in this thesis confirms the finding from earlier studies of greater gains to shareholders in target rather than bidding companies, but does not find evidence supporting overall loss of shareholder value to target company shareholders when a merger is prohibited. It finds evidence that when the regulatory regime is stable and well understood the capital market behaves efficiently in response to new information. However, for a sub group of the mergers involving companies with a new regulatory regime, of which industry and the market had little or no experience with respect to mergers, the capital market operated less efficiently. A number of studies have also considered the motivation of managers to follow a merger strategy. Apparently, none has looked at the influence of competition regulation on merger motives using stock market data and event study techniques. This research examined data for the stock market’s perceptions of what motivated managers to pursue their initial merger bid. The findings suggest that Synergy and Hubris dominate as motivations for mergers and that, unintentionally, competition policy may help to reduce the number of mergers motivated by Managerialism.

The concept of asymmetric information is probably best described by medieval idiom to buy a pig in a poke or to buy a cat in a sack, and is a long standing issue in a market economy. A solution to this predicament, is thought to be an objective third party certifier who would provide true information for the market participants. Credit Rating Agencies (CRAs) by all definitions act as such certifiers within financial markets and have been on the public spotlight for the last years. In both cases, the US subprime mortgage crisis and the EU sovereign debt crisis, the agencies were charged for miss-information on quality of financial products, that led to financial losses for the investors or debtors. Theoretical deduction suggest that certain market reaction to CRA announcements may indicate  if markets perceive CRAs themselves as selling a cat in a sack to the investors. Event study approach is employed to investigate how do sovereign debt market react to CRA announcements. The results suggest that sovereign debt market reaction is more pronounced if three major CRAs issue clustered announcements, and more actively react to following announcements as opposed to the leading ones.

The purpose of this thesis is to identify key factors underlying exchange rate developments during the European sovereign debt crisis by examining the impact of credit rating news, published by the three leading credit rating agencies, on conditional returns and volatility of EUR/USD (direct quotation) exchange rate. Empirical results highlight the importance of interest rate differential and volatility index of options exchange in explaining EUR/USD exchange rate volatilities. Downgrade announcements by Standard & Poor’s as well as watch revisions by Fitch Ratings had a detrimental impact on the value of Euro, leading to a subsequent Euro depreciation over the period under consideration (January 2009 – April 2012).

The purpose of the thesis is to study share price response to quarterly earnings per share (EPS) announcements in the world steel industry for the last five years (from 2007 to 2011), using the event study methodology. Moreover, the paper attempts to test share price reactions to earnings releases for yearly aggregation (pre-crisis, crisis and post-crisis periods) and countries aggregation (developed and developing countries) of sample steel companies. The research is conducted employing a sample of 30 listed companies, operating in the steel industry. The steel producers’ headquarters are situated in thirteen countries; they are traded on twelve stock markets as primary listing stock exchanges and are referred to thirteen respective indexes.The thesis uses the event study methodology in order to address the purpose of the research. This methodology provides an insight on how numerous corporate events (M&As and takeovers announcements, regulatory changings and earnings announcements) influence company’s stock prices. All the announcements were divided into two groups: “negative” announcements (Group I) and “positive” announcements (Group II). By “negative” announcements it is meant, that new actual earnings per share are smaller than earnings per share from the last quarter, and vice versa for “positive” announcements. The pattern for overall aggregation of sample companies showed the significant and expected share price response to earnings announcements for Group I only. The output for Group II was puzzling. This led to the assumption of negative market perception on the steel industry stock prices as a result of 2007-2008 financial crises. Indeed, for 2007, which was determined as a pre-crisis period for the steel industry, the share price reaction was significant for both groups of EPS announcements. However, within the two other periods (crisis period of 2008-2009 and post-crisis period of 2010-2011) significant and expected pattern was obtained only for Group I once again. The 2007 yearly aggregation comprised only twenty companies due to the data availability. This revealed the assumption, that this sample of twenty steel companies should be tested for the two other periods. However, the pattern remained the same as in the overall aggregation case. Furthermore, the sample steel companies were aggregated on countries basis. The obtained response was analogous to overall aggregation response, the only difference is that Group I reaction was more significant for developed countries than for developing counties sample.

In the aftermath of the verdict of acquittal in “Sweden’s largest insider trading case” once again a debate concerning illegal insider trading has arisen and a lot of criticism is directed towards the laws. The purpose of this master´s thesis is to investigate the occurrence of insider trading and whether or not Swedish legislation has decreased the presence of insider trading on the Stockholm Stock Exchange. For this purpose the legal aspects and relevant arguments are presented and discussed. An event study is performed in order to see if profit warnings show evidence of insider trading on the Swedish stock exchange. The event study show statistically significant evidence of illegal insider trading in 21 out of 44 cases on the Stockholm stock exchange. There is no significant difference in insider trading between profit warnings and reversed profit warnings. The regression show evidence of that the law has had a small negative impact on insider trading in the sample which is surprising and that insider trading is industry correlated. The high frequency of insider trading shows evidence of that the laws are inefficient in stopping insider trading. Since it is clear that the law is seriously flawed in stopping insider trading and that insider trading actually may positively affect the market and its participants, it is argued that it is very questionable if the legislation is necessary and if insider trading should be prohibited at all.