Exploiting mergers between lenders and shareholders of the same firm as an exogenous shock to shareholder–creditor conflicts, we examine the causal effect of these conflicts on firms' ex ante expected stock price crash risk evident in the options implied volatility smirk. The decrease in conflicts of interest between lenders and shareholders induces dual holders to encourage the disclosure of more information to alleviate costly information asymmetry with other investors and better execute their oversight role in constraining managers' bad news suppression. Consistent with expectations, we find that a firm's ex ante expected crash risk declines after a shareholder–creditor merger. We also report strong, robust evidence that the negative impact of mergers on firms' expected crash risk increases when institutional investors or lenders have a greater stake in the treatment firms or when shareholder–creditor conflicts are apt to be exacerbated. Additionally, we document that firms issue management earnings forecasts (especially bad news forecasts) more frequently after these mergers. Finally, we find that expected crash risk decreases more after mergers in firms suffering worse information asymmetry and with weak monitoring mechanisms. Our evidence suggests that option market participants value the dual holder's role in deterring managers' bad news hoarding.

We exploit the staggered introduction of the PCAOB's international inspection program to examine the role that the stringency of public audit oversight plays in shaping US institutional investors' home bias. Analyzing a sample of foreign firms listed in the United States, we evaluate whether US institutional investors hold larger equity stakes in these firms—a longstanding issue that reflects investor portfolio decisions—if their auditors are exposed to the threat of a PCAOB inspection. In a differences‐in‐differences framework, we find that US‐listed foreign firms enjoy an increase in US institutional investors' equity positions after their auditors become subject to PCAOB inspection access. Cross‐sectional analysis implies that the benefit of the PCAOB inspection threat in mitigating US institutional investors' home bias is concentrated in foreign countries without a strict local audit oversight system; active US institutional investors that are known to value accounting transparency; and firms from countries that grant PCAOB access later (after the onset of its international inspection program in 2005). Our evidence suggests that foreign firms become better known in the capital markets under the PCAOB inspection program, which induces US institutional investors to acquire larger equity stakes in US‐listed foreign firms given the lower information asymmetry that ensues under the PCAOB inspection threat.