← Search

Journal of Corporate Finance Vol. 31 2015

Institutional shareholding and information content of dividend surprises: Re-examining the dynamics in dividend-reappearance era

Abu Amin1; Shantanu Dutta2,3; Samir Saadi2,3; Premal P. Vora4

1 Central Michigan University · 2 University of Ottawa · 3 Wilfrid Laurier University · 4 Pennsylvania State University

Abstract

We examine the role of institutional investors' investment horizon on the information content associated with dividend announcement surprises in the “dividend-reappearance era”. We find that the presence of institutional investors negatively affects the announcement period cumulative abnormal return (CAR), which suggests that institutional investors reduce information content of dividend announcements. This result is primarily driven by the fact that institutional investors, especially the not-short-horizon investors, do not prefer dividend surprises – which leads to lower announcement period CAR. We do not find support for institutional investors' informed trading argument. Our study reveals that in order to understand the dynamics between institutional ownership and information content of dividend announcements, it is important to differentiate the institutional investors' investment horizons.

DOI
10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2015.02.002
Volume
31
Pages
152-170
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

Cite