Do Managers Disclose or Withhold Bad News? Evidence from Short Interest

2018 ◽  
Vol 94 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dichu Bao ◽  
Yongtae Kim ◽  
G. Mujtaba Mian ◽  
Lixin (Nancy) Su
Keyword(s):  
Private Information ◽  
Voluntary Disclosure ◽  
Stock Price ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Bad News ◽  
General Tendency ◽  
Litigation Risk ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Conflicting Evidence ◽  
Short Interest

ABSTRACT Prior studies provide conflicting evidence as to whether managers have a general tendency to disclose or withhold bad news. A key challenge for this literature is that researchers cannot observe the negative private information that managers possess. We tackle this challenge by constructing a proxy for managers' private bad news (residual short interest) and then perform a series of tests to validate this proxy. Using management earnings guidance and 8-K filings as measures of voluntary disclosure, we find a negative relation between bad-news disclosure and residual short interest, suggesting that managers withhold bad news in general. This tendency is tempered when firms are exposed to higher litigation risk, and it is strengthened when managers have greater incentives to support the stock price. Based on a novel approach to identifying the presence of bad news, our study adds to the debate on whether managers tend to withhold or release bad news. Data Availability: Data used in this study are available from public sources identified in the study.

Do Firms Redact Information from Material Contracts to Conceal Bad News?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dichu Bao ◽  
Yongtae Kim ◽  
Lixin (Nancy) Su
Keyword(s):  
Stock Price ◽  
Positive Association ◽  
Securities And Exchange Commission ◽  
Bad News ◽  
Crash Risk ◽  
Public Disclosure ◽  
Litigation Risk ◽  
External Monitoring ◽  
Future Performance ◽  
Equity Incentives

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) allows firms to redact information from material contracts by submitting confidential treatment requests, if redacted information is not material and would cause competitive harm upon public disclosure. This study examines whether managers use confidential treatment requests to conceal bad news. We show that confidential treatment requests are positively associated with residual short interest, a proxy for managers’ private negative information. This positive association is more pronounced for firms with lower litigation risk, higher executive equity incentives, and lower external monitoring. Confidential treatment requests filed by firms with higher residual short interests are associated with higher stock price crash risk and poorer future performance. Collectively, our results suggest that managers redact information from material contracts to conceal bad news.

Discretionary Aggregation

2016 ◽  
Vol 92 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Ebert ◽  
Dirk Simons ◽  
Jack D. Stecher
Keyword(s):  
Private Information ◽  
Voluntary Disclosure ◽  
Bad News ◽  
Good News ◽  
News Source ◽  
Hide Information ◽  
Many Sources ◽  
Jel Classifications

ABSTRACT We study a disclosure decision for a firm's manager with many sources of private information. The presence of multiple numerical signals provides the manager with an opportunity to hide information via aggregation, presenting net amounts in order to show information in its best light. We show that this ability to aggregate fundamentally changes the nature of voluntary disclosure, due to the market's inability to verify that a report is free of strategic aggregation. We find that, in equilibrium, the manager fully discloses if and only if the manager's private information makes the firm look sufficiently weak. By separating bad news from good news, a disaggregate report informs the market of as much offsetting news as possible, revealing how close the news is to a neutral benchmark. The result is, therefore, pooling at the top and separation at the bottom, the opposite of what transpires with a single news source. JEL Classifications: M41; D82; D83.

Competing Information Sources

2017 ◽  
Vol 93 (4) ◽  
pp. 151-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eti Einhorn
Keyword(s):  
Private Information ◽  
Voluntary Disclosure ◽  
Stock Price ◽  
Information Sources ◽  
Equilibrium Shape ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Full Disclosure ◽  
Additional Information ◽  
Disclosure Strategy ◽  
Selective Disclosure

ABSTRACT This study analyzes corporate voluntary disclosures to the capital market in the presence of competing information sources, from which traders can subsequently obtain additional public and private information. The analysis demonstrates that the anticipated access of traders to additional information sources may significantly alter the voluntary disclosure strategy of firms. It may explain a deviation from the conventional full disclosure equilibrium to equilibrium with partial and selective disclosure. It may also lead to an untypical equilibrium shape, where any information content can be disclosed and can be withheld with a positive probability, and where the stock price reflects a pricing discount upon disclosure rather than in its absence. JEL Classifications: D82; G10; M41.

Securitization and Insider Trading

2015 ◽  
Vol 91 (2) ◽  
pp. 649-675 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen G. Ryan ◽  
Jennifer Wu Tucker ◽  
Ying Zhou
Keyword(s):  
Financial Crisis ◽  
Stock Returns ◽  
Business Model ◽  
Insider Trading ◽  
Private Information ◽  
Stock Price ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Insider Information ◽  
Negatively Associated ◽  
Crisis Period

ABSTRACT Securitizations are complex and opaque transactions. We hypothesize that bank insiders trade on private information about banks': (1) securitization-related recourse risks, (2) not-yet-reported current-quarter securitization income, and (3) securitization-based business model sustainability. We provide evidence that proxies for each of these types of insider information are positively associated with insider trading. Specifically, we find that net insider sales in the 2001Q2–2007Q2 pre-financial crisis quarters predict not-yet-reported non-performing securitized loans and securitization income for those quarters, and that net insider sales during 2006Q4 predict write-downs of securitization-related assets during the 2007Q3–2008Q4 crisis period. We find that net insider sales are more negatively associated with banks' subsequent stock returns in their securitization quarters than in other quarters. In supplemental analysis, we show that the above findings are driven by trades by banks' CEOs and CFOs, and that insiders avoid larger stock price losses through 10b5-1 plan sales than through non-plan sales. Data Availability: All data are available from public sources.

Legal Liability Coverage and Voluntary Disclosure

2008 ◽  
Vol 83 (6) ◽  
pp. 1639-1669 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jinyoung Park Wynn
Keyword(s):  
Voluntary Disclosure ◽  
Insurance Coverage ◽  
Legal Liability ◽  
Bad News ◽  
Litigation Risk ◽  
Disclosure Decisions ◽  
Excess Cash ◽  
Litigation Cost ◽  
Directors And Officers ◽  
Insurance Data

ABSTRACT: This paper examines whether legal liability coverage, as measured by excess Directors’ and Officers’ (D&O) liability insurance coverage and excess cash for indemnification, is associated with the quantity and the quality of a firm’s voluntary disclosures. Using Canadian firms whose D&O insurance data are publicly available, I find that firms with higher excess coverage are less likely to report bad news forecasts for the sample firms that are cross-listed in the U.S., and that the number of bad news forecasts decreases for large cross-listed sample firms having high litigation risk. The results are consistent with the litigation cost argument for the disclosure of bad news. I also find that higher excess liability coverage leads to disclosures of more precise bad news for the cross-listed sample firms and less timely disclosures of bad news for large cross-listed sample firms. Further, excess cash for indemnification is a more significant determinant of disclosure decisions.

Voluntary Disclosure Incentives and Earnings Informativeness

2012 ◽  
Vol 87 (5) ◽  
pp. 1679-1708 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sugata Roychowdhury ◽  
Ewa Sletten
Keyword(s):  
Voluntary Disclosure ◽  
Information Source ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Bad News ◽  
Good News ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Earnings Differential ◽  
Earnings Informativeness ◽  
Negative News ◽  
Disclosure Incentives

ABSTRACT We propose that the value of the earnings reporting process as an information source lies in limiting delays in the release of bad news, either by inducing managers to disclose it voluntarily or by directly releasing the negative news that managers have incentives to withhold. We compare earnings informativeness in bad-news and good-news quarters. Using returns to measure news, we find, consistent with our prediction, that earnings informativeness relative to other sources is higher in bad-news quarters than in good-news quarters. Further, cross-sectional tests indicate that earnings differential informativeness in bad-news quarters is more pronounced when managers do not voluntarily disclose the news, information asymmetry is stronger, and managers are net sellers of stock. JEL Classifications: G3; M4; M40; M41; M48. Data Availability: Data are available from Compustat, CRSP, First Call, I/B/E/S, ISSM, TAQ, and Thompson Financial.

Discretionary Disclosures in Response to Intra-Industry Information Transfers

1994 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashiq Ali ◽  
Joshua Ronen ◽  
Shu-Hsing Li
Keyword(s):  
Private Information ◽  
Stock Price ◽  
Indirect Evidence ◽  
Bad News ◽  
Price Changes ◽  
Earnings Releases ◽  
Information Transfers ◽  
Full Revelation

This study examines information disclosures about non-announcing firms' following the earnings release by another firm in the same industry. It provides indirect evidence (through stock price changes) that the information disclosed about non-announcing firms is significant only when announcing firms convey bad news through their earnings releases and when non-announcing firms are large. This finding provides support to Verrecchia's (1983) theory which predicts that in the presence of disclosure related costs, full revelation of managers' private information (as shown in the Grossman [1981]-Milgrom [1981] world) does not obtain. Instead, managers use discretion in disclosing their private information.

scholarly journals Shareholder Litigation and the Information Content of Management Voluntary Disclosure

2019 ◽  
Vol 95 (5) ◽  
pp. 279-298
Author(s):  
Yuanyuan Ma
Keyword(s):  
Information Content ◽  
Private Information ◽  
Voluntary Disclosure ◽  
Legal Liability ◽  
Bad News ◽  
Good News ◽  
Voluntary Disclosures ◽  
Shareholder Litigation

ABSTRACT I study the information content of management voluntary disclosures disciplined by shareholder litigation. I model the litigation mechanism in which legal liabilities are based on the damages that shareholders suffer from buying a stock at an inflated price. I find that management does not fully reveal private information in equilibrium. Instead, their disclosures reveal only a range in which their private information lies. Thus, the precision of information is, to some extent, lost. Notably, increasing the severity of legal liability does not always reduce the loss of precision. In fact, when the legal liability reaches a certain level, more severe legal liability will result in less precise disclosures. I also find that good news and bad news have different precision. Specifically, good news is more precise than is bad news when legal liabilities are high, and bad news is more precise than is good news when legal liabilities are low.

Analysts' Information Acquisition and Stock Price Synchronicity: A Regulatory Perspective from China

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Haiyan Jiang ◽  
Donghua Zhou ◽  
Joseph H. Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Insider Trading ◽  
Private Information ◽  
Stock Prices ◽  
Information Acquisition ◽  
Stock Price ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
Stock Price Synchronicity ◽  
Playing Field ◽  
Information Advantage ◽  
Private Information Acquisition

SYNOPSIS Against the backdrop of the Chinese Directive 40 (China's Reg FD) issued in 2007 as an attempt to curb insider trading and to level the information playing field, this study investigates whether analysts' private information acquisition influences the extent to which firm-specific information is impounded into stock prices, i.e., stock price synchronicity, and how the restrictions on selective disclosures imposed by Directive 40 have shaped the relationship between analyst information acquisition and synchronicity. Using a pre-Directive 40 sample, we show that synchronicity is negatively related to analysts' private information acquisition, which provides support for the “information advantage” argument of analysts' information production. However, the ability of analysts' private information acquisition in improving firm-specific information incorporated into stock price is mitigated post-Directive 40 due to a restriction on selective disclosures and/or private communication. Moreover, we find that this regulatory impact varies for firms being followed by affiliated analysts versus non-affiliated analysts. JEL Classifications: G14; G15; G17; G18.

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