Why Do Institutions Delay Reporting Their Shareholdings? Evidence from Form 13F

Institutional investors are allowed to delay their disclosures of quarter-end holdings via form 13F for up to 45 days. This forbearance may help protect the institutions from potentially damaging behavior by other traders, in particular from free-riding copycatters and from front-runners. It also may help the institutions hide their voting power, and this has prompted public corporations to request a much shorter maximum reporting lag. We look at 14 years of 13F filings to gauge the role of these three motives in the decision to delay disclosure, and the results indicate that front-running and voting, but not copycatting, motivate delays.