{"title":"The pervasiveness of matching rights in merger agreements: Impact on shareholder wealth","authors":"Sridhar Gogineni, John Puthenpurackal","doi":"10.1111/jfir.12465","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jfir.12465","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Matching rights provisions have become ubiquitous in merger agreements in recent years prompting calls for an evaluation of their usage. Using a sample of 2,640 M&A agreements announced between 2003 and 2018, we conduct the first comprehensive analysis of the impact of matching rights provisions on initial and final target premiums, controlling for other merger provisions, deal and firm characteristics. We do not find evidence to suggest that the indiscriminate usage of matching rights in the 2011–2018 period has been detrimental to target shareholders. Moreover, for the 2003–2010 period, we find a positive association between matching rights and target premiums. We also find a positive or non-negative impact on target premiums for different subsamples of potential concern based on selling method, bidder type, termination fee size, and information asymmetry. Finally, we do not find evidence that matching rights deter competing bids. Overall, the usage of matching rights appears consistent with efficient contracting, assuaging concerns raised by Restrepo and Subramanian (2017).</p>","PeriodicalId":47584,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Financial Research","volume":"48 3","pages":"1249-1277"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2025-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144934786","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Selection effects in the births of mutual funds","authors":"André de Souza","doi":"10.1111/jfir.12437","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jfir.12437","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Newborn funds disproportionately hold popular stocks, representing long-lived strategic choices. This suggests that when choosing strategies in which to launch new funds, families do not consider only expectations for their own performance but also consider investor sentiment toward those strategies. The two motives for entry result in an interaction effect between competitive entry and strategy popularity, which affects performance and flows for both existing and newborn funds. Newborn funds' expectations for performance are partly driven by fund manager skill in those strategies, but this is not the only factor, leaving a role for time-varying investment opportunities.</p>","PeriodicalId":47584,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Financial Research","volume":"48 3","pages":"1101-1130"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2025-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144935452","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The efficacy of market timing and value creation","authors":"Chunhua Lan","doi":"10.1111/jfir.12447","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jfir.12447","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In this article, I use a total timing measure that differentiates between cash-flow timing and discount-rate timing to assess value creation among actively managed US equity mutual funds. My findings indicate that some funds exhibit cash-flow timing skills. Collectively, the top 20% of timing funds generate $3.4 billion annually in constant January 2000 dollars. Both sector rotation and individual stock selection contribute to executing timing techniques. Skilled timing funds shift their stockholdings toward cyclical sectors when anticipating positive changes in aggregate cash flows and toward defensive sectors when anticipating negative changes. Sector funds demonstrate similar cash-flow timing skills through their individual stock bets.</p>","PeriodicalId":47584,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Financial Research","volume":"48 3","pages":"1032-1066"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-12-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jfir.12447","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144935395","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How smart is smart money? Evidence from mutual funds' exposure on corporate misconduct","authors":"Dongmin Kong, Zhao Zhao","doi":"10.1111/jfir.12448","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jfir.12448","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We examine how mutual funds' trading and performance respond to corporate misconduct. We exploit a combined dataset of corporate misconduct and holding information of mutual funds and find that mutual funds tend to not only sell but also buy more stocks of corporations with misconduct. Moreover, the exposure to misconduct stocks is negatively related to mutual funds' future performance. The top quintile portfolio of funds with the highest level of misconduct exposure underperforms the bottom quintile by 1.57% to 1.97% on an annualized basis. This performance gap is wider when it is easier for fund managers to gain information advantages.</p>","PeriodicalId":47584,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Financial Research","volume":"48 3","pages":"1131-1159"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144935469","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Understanding the cross-section of CDS returns using equity options","authors":"Diep Duong, Sunjin Park","doi":"10.1111/jfir.12446","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jfir.12446","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We examine the cross-section of credit default swap (CDS) returns by forming CDS portfolios based on the implied volatility curves of equity options. We document that CDS protection sellers earn higher average returns for: (1) firms with higher at-the-money implied volatility and (2) firms with steeper volatility skew when conditioning on high implied volatility. We find that, relative to bond returns, CDS returns are better explained by our proposed measures interacted with standard credit determinants. Our reasoning is that the large degree of informed trading in the CDS market makes it more in sync with the equity options market, which is also known to attract informed traders.</p>","PeriodicalId":47584,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Financial Research","volume":"48 3","pages":"982-1012"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-12-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144935371","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Grace E. Arnold, Takeshi Nishikawa, Meredith E. Rhodes
{"title":"Debt financing, the pandemic, and Federal Reserve interventions","authors":"Grace E. Arnold, Takeshi Nishikawa, Meredith E. Rhodes","doi":"10.1111/jfir.12444","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jfir.12444","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Using data on newly issued corporate bonds and syndicated loans, we investigate the effects of the Federal Reserve's interventions during the pandemic on corporate debt activity. We document heterogeneous effects for participation rates across firm credit ratings and debt maturity, consistent with a default risk channel of policy transmission. Investment-grade firms disproportionately participate in debt markets following the Fed's announcements, which is driven by the riskiest firms (A and BBB ratings). We also find that BBB and BB-rated firms drive increased participation in short-term debt markets. These results provide evidence that the Fed's interventions improved credit market access to investment-grade firms and the highest-rated noninvestment-grade firms.</p>","PeriodicalId":47584,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Financial Research","volume":"48 3","pages":"929-949"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144935262","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The effects of bank mergers on listed U.S. borrowers","authors":"Shuangshuang Ji, David C. Mauer, Yilei Zhang","doi":"10.1111/jfir.12442","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jfir.12442","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We examine the effects of U.S. bank mergers on listed U.S. borrowers. Target bank borrowers receive lower loan spreads and no change in loan amount post-merger in comparison to pre-merger. In contrast, acquiring bank borrowers receive an increase in loan amount and a relatively small decrease in loan spread in the post-merger period. Analysis shows that these benefits are available only when borrowers have bargaining power through lending relationships with non-merging banks. We examine how borrower size, merger type, bank size, and borrower relationship intensity affect our results. Overall, our analysis suggests that efficiency gains from bank consolidation outweigh market power effects.</p>","PeriodicalId":47584,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Financial Research","volume":"48 3","pages":"950-981"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/jfir.12442","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144934785","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Commodity tail risk and equity risk premia","authors":"Zhenyu Lu, Ying Jiang, Xiaoquan Liu","doi":"10.1111/jfir.12440","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jfir.12440","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We explore the asset pricing implication of the commodity tail risk, constructed by aggregating individual commodity's exposure to left-tail realizations of systematic risks, in cross-sectional stock returns. Using Chinese data from 2005 to 2022, we find that the risk-adjusted return differential between extreme portfolios is highly significant at 1.39% per month. The economic rationale is that a high level of commodity tail risk signals adverse economic conditions, and stocks that hedge the tail risk offer a low premium. Our findings highlight the informational role of commodity futures prices and the link between commodity and equity markets in China.</p>","PeriodicalId":47584,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Financial Research","volume":"48 3","pages":"1350-1407"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144935493","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Unintended consequences of discrimination litigation caps","authors":"Spencer Barnes","doi":"10.1111/jfir.12443","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jfir.12443","url":null,"abstract":"<p>On July 14, 1992, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) implemented a policy that caps punitive damage payouts from discrimination litigation at different employee counts allowing for a “difference-in-discontinuities” design. I find that these kink points incentivize firms to restrict their number of employees, which reduces their maximum discrimination litigation exposure to between 40% and 60% of their yearly median revenues. In turn, firm growth decreases for firms below these EEOC thresholds after the implementation of the policy. These firms reduce financing and are not motivated to decrease growth by relative changes in cash flows from discrimination risk exposure.</p>","PeriodicalId":47584,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Financial Research","volume":"48 3","pages":"1315-1349"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144934919","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dividend mispricing: Evidence from all-stock merger deals","authors":"Kerron Joseph, Palani-Rajan Kadapakkam","doi":"10.1111/jfir.12441","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/jfir.12441","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Stock prices of targets in all-stock merger deals should reflect acquirer share values, net of expected dividend payments before deal completion. This setting provides a unique opportunity to examine whether market prices of target stocks reflect the price reducing impact of impending acquirer dividends. We find evidence that target stock returns on the acquirer ex-day are negatively related to the size of the dividend payments, indicating an incomplete adjustment on the last cum-day. However, given the size of typical quarterly dividends, the magnitude of the estimated 30% incomplete adjustment to the dividend does not represent a viable arbitrage opportunity. Examining a longer window, we find that roughly 70% of the acquirer dividend is incorporated into the target stock price in the period two days after the dividend announcement to the ex-day. Overall, our results are consistent with target stock prices adjusting slowly over time to reflect impending acquirer dividends.</p>","PeriodicalId":47584,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Financial Research","volume":"48 3","pages":"1067-1100"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-10-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144935305","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}