This paper examines whether a firm’s reputation is a determinant of repurchase completion rates (the ratio of actual to announced repurchases) and whether the stock market discounts announcements made by less reputable firms. Prior completion rates are positively correlated with current completion rates and announcement returns, suggesting consistency in repurchases and implying a reputational effect. Further, a nascent literature regarding accelerated share repurchases (ASRs) finds them to be more credible than open market repurchases. I show that the probability of announcing an ASR is greater for firms likely to be concerned about reputation because of low past completion rates.

Both risk management and payout decisions affect a firm's financial flexibility—the ability to avoid costly financial distress as well as underinvestment. We provide evidence of substitution between hedging and payout decisions using samples of both financial and nonfinancial firms. We find that a more flexible distribution, favoring repurchases over dividends, is negatively related to financial hedging within a firm, consistent with financial flexibility in payout decisions and hedging being substitutes. Our findings, which are robust to controlling for the endogeneity of hedging and payout choices, suggest that payout flexibility offers operational hedging benefits.

ABSTRACT This paper examines changes in corporate behavior around the 2003 modification to SEC Rule 10b-18, which mandates enhanced disclosure of repurchase transactions. Firms announce significantly fewer and slightly smaller open market repurchase plans in the enhanced disclosure environment. However, completion rates (the amount of stock repurchased as a percentage of the announced amount) significantly increase. More conservative announcement strategies and more aggressive completion rates are consistent with a decline in false signaling. Indeed, open market repurchase announcements are viewed as more credible, on average, in the enhanced disclosure environment; after controlling for firm characteristics, cumulative abnormal announcement returns are significantly greater in the high disclosure period. As with any analysis based on a regulatory change affecting all firms simultaneously, other unobservable, macroeconomic trends could have affected repurchase behavior. Nonetheless, these results are consistent with significant changes in corporate behavior around new mandatory disclosures. JEL Classifications: G14; G30; G35; G38; M48; K22

Signaling undervaluation is often considered a primary motive for repurchasing stock, but insider trading activity by repurchasing firms is not always consistent with undervaluation. Net insider buying and selling are both more frequent in quarters when firms are repurchasing non-trivial amounts of stock, with the odds of observing a repurchase the highest in quarters with net insider selling. In multinomial logit models, share repurchases associated with net insider selling are positively related to illiquidity, option exercises by insiders, and pre-repurchase returns and negatively correlated with industry-adjusted book to market ratios when compared to other repurchases. Hence, repurchases when insiders are selling stock are more likely done to support share prices or avoid dilution and are less likely undervaluation signals. We find that insider trades either validate or mitigate the undervaluation signal of the repurchase. Abnormal returns of repurchasing firms with net insider buying versus net insider selling in a given quarter are significantly higher for the quarter immediately after the repurchase and the three subsequent years. For repurchases accompanied by net insider selling, abnormal returns are negligible after only one year.

Political and regulatory uncertainty is strongly negatively associated with merger and acquisition activity at the macro and firm levels. The strongest effects are for uncertainty regarding taxes, government spending, monetary and fiscal policies, and regulation. Consistent with a real options channel, the effect is exacerbated for less reversible deals and for firms whose product demand or stock returns exhibit greater sensitivity to policy uncertainty, but attenuated for deals that cannot be delayed due to competition and for deals that hedge firm-level risk. Contractual mechanisms (deal premiums, termination fees, MAC clauses) unanimously point to policy uncertainty increasing the target’s negotiating power.

This paper investigates the timing and source of anomalous positive long-run abnormal returns following repurchase authorizations. Returns between program authorization and completion announcements are indistinguishable from 0. Abnormal returns occur only after completion announcements. Long-run returns are largely attributable to announcement returns at subsequent authorizations and takeover attempts; that is, anomalous post-authorization returns are not persistent drifts but rather step functions. These findings have important implications for prior papers examining this most persistent and widespread anomaly. Further, our results serve to refocus the search for a rational explanation for the anomaly on subsequent repurchase announcements and takeover bids.

Over the last two decades, share repurchases have emerged as the dominant payout channel, offering a more flexible means of returning excess cash to investors. However, little is known about the costs associated with payout-related financial flexibility. Using a unique identification strategy, we document a significant cost. We find that actual repurchase investments underperform hypothetical investments that mechanically smooth repurchase dollars through time by approximately two percentage points per year on average. This cost of financial flexibility is correlated with earnings management, managerial entrenchment, and less institutional monitoring.

Though short sellers on average succeed at identifying overvalued equity, firms often signal disagreement with short sellers by repurchasing stock when short interest increases. We investigate whether this disagreement reflects a myopic defense of inflated prices, or positive private information. These repurchases appear motivated by managers’ private information, not agency issues, even when managerial benefits to short-termism are enhanced or monitoring is weaker. Managers’ informational advantage relates to subsequent news, earnings, and risk, but is attenuated if activists target management or insiders sell. A trading strategy based on our findings earns 7.5% annually.

ABSTRACT Using novel data from the pharmaceutical industry, we study product prices and innovation around mergers. Exploiting within‐deal variation in product market consolidation, we show that prices increase more for drugs in consolidating markets than for matched control drugs. Estimates indicate a 2% average price effect that persists for about one year. Price increases expand with acquirer‐target product similarity and are more pronounced within less competitive product markets with fewer players and no generic competition. Examination of trade‐offs reveals these deals generate significant shareholder value. They also spur labeling and other manufacturing‐related innovation, but not the development of new drugs.

Both risk management and payout decisions affect a firm's financial flexibility—the ability to avoid costly financial distress as well as underinvestment. We provide evidence of substitution between hedging and payout decisions using samples of both financial and nonfinancial firms. We find that a more flexible distribution, favoring repurchases over dividends, is negatively related to financial hedging within a firm, consistent with financial flexibility in payout decisions and hedging being substitutes. Our findings, which are robust to controlling for the endogeneity of hedging and payout choices, suggest that payout flexibility offers operational hedging benefits.