This paper analyzes informed trading in acquiring firms through (stock) merger announcements. We show that pre-announcement abnormal option volumes in acquiring firms strongly increase ahead of a stock merger (by approximately 300%). Furthermore, we show that the direction of option trades (puts...

This paper analyzes informed trading in acquiring firms through (stock) merger announcements. We show that pre-announcement abnormal option volumes in acquiring firms strongly increase ahead of a stock merger (by approximately 300%). Furthermore, we show that the direction of option trades (puts...

This paper explores whether and how political connections affect the likelihood of completing a cross-border M&A deal for Chinese publicly listed, but privately-owned enterprises (POEs) and the resulting firm performance. In line with our proposed political connection trade-off theory, we find...