Information Quality and Risk Around Mergers and Acquisition Announcements: Evidence From the London Stock Exchange

Abstract

We consolidate our understanding of the link between risk and quality of new around information intensive periods for a sample of 169 stocks from London Stock Exchange by using mergers and acquisitions announcements as a source of unscheduled news disclosure. We document that volatility of stock returns around mergers and acquisitions announcements is directly related to the quality of the news disclosed and inversely related to the amount of pre-announcement information. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that firms with a lot of prior information tend to experience relatively less price volatility around mergers and/or acquisitions announcements than firms with little pre-announcement information. The evidence also supports the assertion that firms that disclose precise information about their take-over activities should, on average, undergo relatively large price volatility than firms that announce imprecise information about their take-over intentions. This evidence provides a partial support for theoretical work of McNichols and Trueman (1994). Overall, the implication of Kim and Verrecchia's (1991a, 1997) propositions regarding volatility carry over to unscheduled news releases. The evidence also suggests that widening the event window give rise to results that are generally incompatible with the propositions of Kim and Verrecchia (1991a, 1997) and McNichols and Trueman (1994).

African Journal of Finance and Management Vol.12(1) 2003: 41-56