The stock market stress caused by the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak generated an ideal situation for cash-rich activists to buy strategic equity positions in target firms. Distinguishing low stock valuations due to bad management decisions, potentially necessitating an activist campaign, from the systematic blow due to the pandemic’s economic impact, may have been too difficult under the circumstances we observed in the early months. Some of these activist campaigns… Read More »Paper Spotlight: Crisis Poison Pills

            Regulators around the world often react to financial crises by restricting short sales of bank stocks to maintain financial stability. Then, a natural question to ask is whether these short-selling restrictions end up alleviating unwarranted price drops for banks and hence protect vulnerable financial institutions. In a forthcoming RCFS paper, “Short-Selling Bans and Bank Stability,” Alessandro Beber, Daniela Fabbri, Marco Pagano, and Saverio Simonelli… Read More »Paper Spotlight: Short-Selling Bans and Bank Stability

“The Effect of Taxation on Corporate Financing and Investment” by Hong Chen and Murray Frank “How are Bankers Paid?” by Benjamin Bennett, Radhakrishnan Gopalan, and Anjan V. Thakor