The paper analyses how the returns to a shareholder and the returns for an event study are calculated during the three types of seasoned equity offer in use in the UK, namely rights issues, open offers and placings. The calculations differ across the two types of return and the three types of...

We explore if sleep deprivation affects how investors react to relevant news. Using the transition to Daylight Saving Time (DST) in the spring as a disruption to sleeping patterns, we show that investors underreact to a firm’s earnings surprise in the days after the transition to DST. Further,...

The paper presents evidence from UK rights issues on the discounts at which large blocks of new shares plus rights are sold. The shares are renounced by the shareholders entitled to them and placed with passive investors at substantial discounts of around 8% to the expected ex-rights midpoint...

This paper investigates whether personal tax could help explain the size of the historic equity premium in the UK measured before personal tax. If there has been a higher tax burden on equity, some of the premium could be viewed as compensation for tax. We estimate that personal tax reduces the...