Can long-term institutional owners improve market efficiency in parsing complex legal disputes?

Abstract

Long-horizon institutional investors can help mitigate information asymmetries around securities class action (SCA) lawsuits. We find that the machine readability of SCA complaint filings can predict the outcome and duration of class actions. Long-term institutional investor ownership leads to a more positive post-SCA announcement price reaction and increases the volatility ratio of prices as a measure of price informativeness. Furthermore, there is a significant interaction effect between long-term institutional ownership and SCA complexity on price informativeness consistent with a superior information processing ability about complex corporate events affecting portfolio firms.