Reaction of Stock Price to Frauds’ Announcements: Evidence from Indian Banking Sector

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to investigate the reaction of stock price of Indian banks with respect to announcements of frauds. The Event Study Methodology is used to examine the impact of frauds’ announcements to stock price of banks which experienced fraud. The fraud cases which exceed ₹1,000 crores are considered for the period from January 2014 to December 2018. The results indicate that the fraud announcements do affect the stock price of banks which experienced fraud. In majority of cases of frauds under consideration, the study found significant abnormal loss which further supported by the results of abnormal volume ratio. The highest abnormal loss is found in the stock price of Punjab National Bank (8.74 per cent) which involves the scam committed by the Nirav Modi. Due to increased frauds in the banking sector, the confidence of the investors adversely affects which may further lead to consequences on concerned banks. In this direction, the results of the study have importance for the policy makers and regulators for analysing the behaviour of stock price with respect to the announcements of frauds in the Indian banking sector.