Activist shareholders have an incentive to communicate and cooperate with other major shareholders. However, the impact of their activity on information flow surrounding targeted firms is largely unknown. We explore this aspect using a prolific proponent: labor unions. Following the mailing of proxies containing union-sponsored shareholder proposals, trading volume increases significantly and at-issue bond yield spreads of targeted firms are lower compared to matched firms. Subsequent difference-in-differences analyses show that stock prices of targeted firms become more informative as a result of activism, affirming the intuition that activism results in a reduction of differential information between outside investors.

In this paper we examine how stock return synchronicity relates to changes in market-based measures of information-based trading in response to analyst recommendation revisions. We find that the market response to analyst recommendations varies according to R2: stocks with lower R2 experience stronger price, trading volume, return volatility, and bid-ask spread reactions in response to revisions of analyst recommendations. The impact of R2 is strongest among smaller companies, suggesting an elevated role for analysts in disseminating information when prices may be less informed. In a multivariate context, these results are robust to the inclusion of additional explanatory variables including firm size. Our results support the premise that R2 is inversely related to the noisiness of the information environment.

Previous studies document a negative return to equity on the announcement of an SEO. However, the effects of SEO announcements on bonds have received little attention. We find that bondholders experience a significant positive return on the announcement of an SEO and this effect is more pronounced for bonds with lower ratings. We examine alternate explanations for bond market reactions to SEO announcements including the leverage risk reduction, wealth transfer, and information signaling hypotheses. Overall, our results are most consistent with the leverage risk reduction hypothesis.