Study Asserts Startling Numbers of Insider Trading Rogues - NYTimes.com
▻http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/06/16/study-asserts-startling-numbers-of-insider-trading-rogues
Now, a groundbreaking new study finally puts what we’ve instinctively thought into hard numbers — and the truth is worse than we imagined.
A quarter of all public company deals may involve some kind of insider trading, according to the study by two professors at the Stern School of Business at New York University and one professor from McGill University. The study, perhaps the most detailed and exhaustive of its kind, examined hundreds of transactions from 1996 through the end of 2012.
The professors examined stock option movements — when an investor buys an option to acquire a stock in the future at a set price — as a way of determining whether unusual activity took place in the 30 days before a deal’s announcement.
The results are persuasive and disturbing, suggesting that law enforcement is woefully behind — or perhaps is so overwhelmed that it simply looks for the most egregious examples of insider trading, or for prominent targets who can attract headlines.
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But, the professors conclude, the Securities and Exchange Commission litigated only “about 4.7 percent of the 1,859 M.&A. deals included in our sample.”
Et si l’acquéreur est étranger, il a plus de chances de se retrouver dans le collimateur de la SEC…
It is interesting to see that the odds of litigation are higher for deals that are initiated by foreign acquirers.
Ceci d’après la conclusion de l’étude ▻http://irrcinstitute.org/pdf/Informed-Options-Trading_June-12-2014.pdf