With the explosion of Bitcoin, various cryptocurrencies are beginning to garner incredible amounts of attention from speculators and institutional investors alike. Simultaneously, the rise in the number of occurrences of cyber ransom attacks has proven to be an increasingly relevant part of the conversation in the formative years of the Bitcoin ecosystem, as hackers demand payments be in the form of bitcoin. To test the relative impact of these different ransom events on the price of bitcoin, this paper conducts an event study to quantify the reaction by investors upon revelation of the news. In addition, it examines differences between Bitcoin and two other cryptocurrencies, Ethereum and Litecoin, to control for any liquidity effects of victims buying up large sums of bitcoin. The findings of the study indicate that following the ransom events there is a positive price reaction, supporting the claim that investors in Bitcoin generally perceive these events as good news. This could have a profound effect on the development and further adoption of cryptocurrencies, as regulators try to determine whether or not to intervene.

This study analyzes the stock performance of bidding firms in China mainland and Hong Kong around the announcement of mergers and acquisitions transaction. The sample consists of 19 bidding firms in mainland and 11 bidding firms in Hong Kong. Hang Seng Index and Shanghai Composite Index are two proxies for market returns. The result that both average abnormal return and cumulative abnormal return to bidders in China mainland are positive whereas AAR to bidders in Hong Kong is positive in the announced date and CAR is negative during the event window (-5, +5). Compare to two regions, the announcement of mergers and acquisitions in mainland regarded as ‘good news’ to its stock price; however, it is not as good as for Hong Kong market. In the total method of payment, there are 8 transactions by stock and up to 22 deals by cash; that above 70% of acquisitions are pure cash payments in the entire sample. Through the regression model, the author finds regions of acquisitions affect the return because it is tested statistical significant at 5 percent significance level. And methods of payment do not affect abnormal returns and cumulative abnormal return to bidding firms during the event period.

The increase of interest in financial culture following the financial crisis, which started in 2008, as well as the proliferation of financial data, have sparked an emerging research agenda into the role of financial news media. Moreover, financial news media is an important research topic in finance because information released through the media has a wider audience than other information intermediating systems in the financial market. This thesis defines the financial journalist as a significant actor in the intermediation of financial information. It also contributes to understanding how the relationships between intermediaries in firms’ information environments affect financial markets, and in particular whether claims for professionalization can be made by financial journalists and public relations practitioners for their interrelating activities. The further contribution of the thesis is its integration of an interdisciplinary and mixed methods approach. The thesis investigates the research problem through three independent empirical studies that are linked to the research aim of the thesis, and each other, but can be read independently. The first study uses the quantitative, event-study method and tests how 100 small-cap US stocks are affected by different types of carefully-selected information, namely analysts’ recommendations, corporate filings, news media, public relations wires and stock tips received over five years from 1 January 2006 to 31 December 2010. Its first contribution is a problematisation of firms’ information environments from an information intermediation perspective. It therefore finds that news media has the largest negative and absolute effect on stock prices, trading volumes and volatility. The intuitions for this are news media’s wide dissemination; its attraction to reporting bad news, as well as to interpreting events negatively. Further, its independence from firms and role in corporate governance are thought to make bad news especially surprising. The second and third studies form two halves of a qualitative symmetrical study that tests for the intuitions and findings of the quantitative study. They do so through structured and semi-structured interviews with experienced journalists and corporate public relations practitioners about their own perceptions of their respective self-constitutions and ethics; their relationships to each other; their understandings about how their own work and other information intermediaries’ work in firms’ information environments affect financial information; and to determine if and how these factors affect the manner in which they go about doing work. Study 2 considers journalists as actors in the financial market by problematizing them as information intermediaries who disseminate financial information and contribute to corporate governance. It finds they have a professional ethic biased towards reporting bad news and contributes to understanding the professional constitutions and knowledge construction activities of journalists through demonstrating how their beliefs, motivation and self-awareness influence reporting choices and actions. Their level of expertise and credibility in these activities is linked to the relative performativity of news stories. Study 3 studies the expansion of public relations’ reputation risk management activities in relation to journalists and evaluates the industry’s claim for professionalism using Gieryn’s (1983) analytical framework of boundary-work. It considers public relations practitioners as actors in financial markets in the context of globalised, high-speed financial markets and increased demands for corporate social responsibility. It finds that public relations is increasing its monopoly over the dissemination and intermediation of financial information but cannot yet make a claim for professional jurisdiction over these activities.

Organizational researchers have recently taken an interest in the ways in which social movements, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and other secondary stakeholders attempt to influence corporate behavior. Scholars, however, have yet to carefully probe the link between secondary stakeholder legal action and target firm stock market performance. This is puzzling given the sharp rise in NGO-initiated civil lawsuits against corporations in recent years for alleged overseas human rights abuses and environmental misconduct. Furthermore, few studies have considered how such lawsuits impact a target firm’s intangible assets, namely its image and reputation. Structured in the form of three essays, this dissertation examined the antecedents and consequences of secondary stakeholder legal activism in both conceptual and empirical settings. Essay One argued that conventional approaches to understanding political risk fail to account for the reputational risks to multinational enterprises (MNEs) posed by transnational networks of human rights NGOs employing litigation-based strategies. It offered a new framework for understanding this emerging challenge to multinational corporate activity. Essay Two empirically tested the relationship between the filing of human rights-related civil lawsuits and corporate stock market performance using an event study methodology and regression analysis. The statistical analysis performed showed that target firms experience a significant decline in share price upon filing and that both industry and nature of the lawsuit are significantly and negatively related to shareholder wealth. Essay Three drew upon social movement and social identity theories to develop and test a set of hypotheses on how secondary stakeholder groups select their targets for human rights-related civil lawsuits. The results of a logistic regression model offered support for the proposition that MNE targets are chosen based on both interest and identity factors. The results of these essays suggest that legal action initiated by secondary stakeholder groups is a new and salient threat to multinational business and that firms doing business in countries with weak political institutions should factor this into corporate planning and take steps to mitigate their exposure to such risks.

This paper presents an investigation into the relationship between the announcement of acquisitions, the existence of positive abnormal return for shares of these firms and market efficiency in Germany, France and Great Britain. The sample of transactions ranged from January 2010 to December 2015. This thesis has used the event study methodology where the Cumulative Average Abnormal Returns (CAAR) of the target and bidder firm's stock prices in different event windows have been analysed. Across all the markets, target firm's stock price yields positive CAAR that is significantly different from zero on the day of the announcement. Unlike the target firms, bidder firms do not show statistically significant CAAR for all analysed markets. The second goal was to analyse market efficiency using CAAR data from the event study. It was concluded that the analysed markets behave in a semi-strong form of market efficiency with potential cases of insider trading identified.

This paper applies event study analysis on stock and bond market data in 14 European countries between 1990 and 2012 in order to assess market reaction to key economic policymaker changes. The analysis relies on methodological framework is based on article of Kuttner & Posen (2010) and on an original database of political events. The empirical results show that policymaker changes are not reflected in markets as single-day events, rather they are associated with several days of increased volatility following the event. Furthermore, elections are shown to be linked with market volatility on the event day as well as in postevent period.

This study attempts to measure the effects on the share price of companies entering and exiting four FTSE/JSE indices; the J200, J210, J213 and J260. While results showed only weak statistical significance, systematic patterns were observed during the event window. Share prices of companies entering and exiting value weighted indices responded consistently with the investor awareness hypothesis. Share prices of companies entering and exiting indices weighted by fundamental factors responded consistently with the information hypothesis. The cumulative average abnormal returns (CAARs) were permanent and did not reverse within the first 200 days after the index change for all indices. Abnormal returns were calculated by using the market model and a one factor CAPM model. The market model was a superior benchmark in this study. This study found that the CAARs for index changes became positive only after the date of the index change. This implies that either the effect of passive index funds on the JSE is not significant, or that passive funds are allowed to incur tracking errors in order to trade strategically to secure the best price for a reconstituted portfolio. This conclusion is supported by the fact that there was no observable change in the index premium over time. The findings of this study may indicate market inefficiency, which means that arbitrage opportunities may exist around index changes. / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

A indústria bancária brasileira passou por uma onda de fusões e aquisições entre meados dos anos 1990 até o fim dos anos 2000. Para analisar os efeitos mercadológicos e intra-firmas destes eventos, este trabalho se propõe a uma abordagem abrangente acerca dos impactos aos acionistas dos bancos adquirentes através de um estudo de eventos sobre os retornos anormais; dos impactos em indicadores contábeis e financeiros destes bancos adquirentes; e procura por padrões contábeis e financeiros em instituições adquiridas. Como resultado, não encontra evidências de retornos anormais positivos ou negativos aos acionistas de firmas adquirentes no agregado, bem como não evidencia mutações significativas nos balanços destes bancos estatisticamente diferentes de um grupo de controle. No entanto, sob o viés de instituições adquiridas, há evidências de que quanto menor o retorno sobre os ativos, maior a chance de tornar-se alvo em uma operação de aquisição. / The Brazilian banking industry underwent a wave of mergers and acquisitions between the mid-1990s and the late 2000s. In order to analyze the marketing and intra-firm effects of these events, this paper proposes a comprehensive approach of the impacts on shareholders of acquiring banks through an event study on abnormal returns; impact on accounting and financial indicators of these acquiring banks; and search for accounting and financial patterns in acquired institutions. As a result, it does not find evidence of abnormal positive or negative returns to shareholders of acquiring firms in the aggregate, nor it shows significant mutations in the balances of these statistically different banks of a control group. However, under the bias of acquired institutions, there is evidence that the lower the return on assets, the greater the chance of becoming target in a takeover transaction.

This study investigates the determinants of divestitures, the impact of divestitures on shortterm firm value and the determinants of divestiture returns in South Africa. The study is based on a sample of 46 non-financial firms listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) between 2000 and 2014. Logit regressions found CEO Turnover, a measure of corporate focus and Return on Assets (ROA), a measure of corporate efficiency, to be the only statistically significant determinants of divestitures in South Africa. However, Sales growth, Return on Equity (ROE), Debt to Total Assets (D-t-A), Debt to Equity (D-t-E), the current ratio, and the interest coverage ratio did not possess statistical significance as determinants of divestitures in South Africa. The study also investigated the impact of divestitures on short-term shareholder wealth and found that divestitures have a statistically significant positive impact on short-term firm value in South Africa. Finally, the study also investigated the determinants of divestiture returns. Cross-sectional regressions conducted on the full sample of divesting firms found that leverage has a statistically significant effect on divestiture returns in South Africa; however, firm size and efficiency do not have a statistically significant effect on divestiture returns. In order to further understand the determinants of divestiture returns in South Africa the study also separated the portfolio of divesting firms into subsamples. The study found that larger firms report superior abnormal returns than smaller firms, firms with lower levels of efficiency report superior abnormal returns than firms with higher levels of efficiency, and highly-levered firms report superior abnormal returns than lower-levered firms in South Africa.

This paper examines the effects of dividend announcements and dividend payments on OMX30 stock prices and tests if these effects indicate market efficiency. An event study methodology is used to find if the dividend events have a significant impact on stock prices. The study finds that both dividend announcements and dividend payments have a significant negative effect on prices. Disappointed investors or lowered expectations for future dividends may be the cause of the announcement effect. The results indicate that the stock market is semi-strong efficient for the announcements but inefficient when it comes to the payments.