We extend standard models of conditional earnings conservatism and adaptation value to the context of the corporate refocusing activities of UK listed companies. This analysis is interesting because refocusing activities are: (1) commonly anticipated by significant negative returns in the financial year(s) before the refocusing event; (2) typically associated with large material charges; and (3) likely to be part of a strategic plan with the internal decision preceding the formal public announcement. We complement Burgstahler and Dichev [1997] by showing how their nonlinear relation between share prices and earnings changes around refocusing events as adaptation options are exercised. Because refocusing events also involve large realized losses and major changes to firms’ strategic plans, we expect to see systematic changes in the timing relations between stock returns and reported earnings. To capture this, we show how the coefficients of Basu's [1997] model of conditional conservatism change around refocusing events.

Traditional seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) elicit short selling from traders trying to increase offering discounts. Such short selling is more difficult for shelf offerings because the time between their announcement and issuance tends to be shorter. We predict and find that firms with higher short-selling potential (SSP) are more likely to choose shelf over traditional SEOs. This result is robust to alternative proxies for SSP and other sensitivity tests. Further analysis suggests that shelf issuers aim to mitigate the threat of manipulative short selling. Our findings add to a growing literature showing that short selling has a real impact on corporate finance decisions.

Announcements of stock-financed mergers and acquisitions (M&As) may attract short selling of bidder shares by merger arbitrageurs. We hypothesize that bidders with higher short-selling potential include a higher proportion of cash in their M&A payments to mitigate stock price declines resulting from arbitrage short sales. Consistent with this hypothesis, we find that the ex ante net lending supply of bidder shares has a positive impact on the percentage of cash in public target payments. Further tests, including a placebo analysis of public-to-private deals and an analysis of expected price pressure proxies, corroborate the impact of anticipated arbitrage-related price pressure on payment choice.

A seasoned equity offering (SEO) can improve a firm’s stock liquidity and lower its cost of capital. This paper examines whether SEO firms achieve a liquidity gain and the sources of this gain. It explores the role of liquidity risk in explaining SEO long-run performance. The evidence shows that SEO firms experience significant post-issue improvements in liquidity and reductions in liquidity risk. Size and book-to-market matching fails to control for these liquidity effects, generating the low long-term post-SEO performance documented in the literature. After adjusting for liquidity risk, SEO firms show normal long-term performance.