As if the general public hadn’t lost enough faith in the stock market with recent revelations of rigged deal-making that benefits only a few, a new study shows that 25 percent of all M&A deals between public companies involve some kind of insider trading. The study, conducted by McGill University and New York University, looked at informed trading activity in equity options prior to the announcement of corporate deals. The study’s abstract states: For the target companies, we document pervasive directional options activity, consistent with strategies that would yield abnormal returns to investors with private information. This is demonstrated…
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“With New Firepower, S.E.C. Tracks Bigger Game,” Ben Protess and Azam Ahmed report at the New York Times Dealbook. Embarrassed after missing the warning signs of the financial crisis and the Ponzi scheme of Bernard L. Madoff, the agency’s enforcement division has adopted several new — if somewhat unconventional — strategies to restore its credibility. The S.E.C. is taking its cue from criminal authorities, studying statistical formulas to trace connections, creating a powerful unit to cull tips and assign cases and even striking a deal with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to have agents embedded with the regulator. In one of the agency’s first efforts,…