Abstract This paper examines seasoned equity offerings in France. Even though a rights offering is the primary flotation method, French companies are increasingly using the relatively expensive public offering method. We show that the market reaction to the announcement of seasoned equity issues is significantly negative for rights issues and insignificantly negative for public offerings. Our results suggest that the adverse selection effect is greater for rights issues than for public offerings, due to stronger underwriter certification for the public offerings. We find that the share price effect is positively related to blockholders take-up renouncements for firms with prior concentrated ownership. For these firms, the favourable ownership dispersion effect offsets the adverse selection effect. JEL Classification: G32, G14 and D80.

Abstract We examine how investor attention changes when a firm adopts a modern news dissemination technology. We find that after continental European firms begin using an English-language electronic wire service to disseminate company news, they exhibit a stronger initial reaction to earnings surprises, a lower post earnings announcement stock price drift, and an increase in abnormal trading volume near earnings announcements, compared with when they disseminated their news in non-electronic format and in a continental European language. Our results hold for a sub-sample of firms for which the decision to use a wire service was likely exogenous. The effect of wire services on investor attention is due to the format of news (electronic and English-language), not to the increased speed of news transmission.