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An analyst who owns stock in the company she covers may be tempted to protect or enhance her personal interests. This paper examines how this potential conflict of interest affects the reporting of sell-side analysts by identifying and collecting two samples, the first from Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Form 144 filings, and the second from voluntary ownership disclosures. Ordered probit analyses show that owning analyst recommendations are slightly more cautious than those of the control analysts. There is little robust evidence that stock ownership leads to optimistic analyst reporting, however findings indicate that analysts who are consistently optimistic are owners. The results are consistent with a conclusion that analyst stock ownership, unlike other potential incentives, may not be a significant concern since in many cases multiple nonowning analysts also provide reports. Being an outlier potentially reduces any benefit to the owning analyst and risks her personal reputation. In the absence of a detrimental effect, ownership offers a potential benefit as a credible signal of an analyst's conviction in a company's prospects.

This paper investigates the beneficial economic consequences and market and accounting based valuation effects of troubled debt restructurings (TDRs) in financially distressed debtor firms. Relying on the implications of prior research and extant valuation theories, some empirical evidence on the beneficial outcomes and informativeness of TDR is first provided: significantly positive restructuring interval excess returns and higher excess returns to subsequently consummated restructurings and subsequent survivors. The market reaction to "full-settlement" and "modification of terms" types of TDR are also measured to evaluate the consistency of the FASB's binary classification and recognition criteria with the market participants' assessments. Finally, a valuation model conditional on book values and earnings is used to test the value relevance of the reported financial statement bottom lines and TDR related disclosure. The findings suggest that modifications are at least as beneficial and informative as full settlements. Hence, the recognition of the reduction in the liability and the related gain in the financial statements of firms that undertake modifications would be more congruent with the valuation effects assessed by market participants.

Ever since the incorporation of Unit Trust of India in 1964, the mutual fund industry has developed quickly and gained a lot of recognition. In all of the world’s capital markets, mutual funds have developed as a significant avenue of investment. Mutual funds have played, and therefore will continue to play, a critical part in India’s capital market development. A few of the grounds for mutual funds’ rapid popularity is that they combine low risk with income security, making them perfect for median and smaller investors who would otherwise be unable to participate in the stock market. The investors are finding it as a proper field to invest and earn, amidst the risk involved in it. Thereby, the determinants for an investor that influences him to make investment will vary between them and further, investing in mutual funds over other financial products may appeal to investors for a variety of reasons. This research may look into the elements that influence investors’ decisions to invest in mutual funds.

Changing weather patterns and increasing extreme weather events, such as droughts, floods, wildfires and hurricanes resulting from climate change, not only impact communities and their people but also the businesses that are operating in those communities. In order to mitigate any risks from climate change on their operations, companies need to be prepared and have respective strategies and procedures in place. Investors that are investing in companies also need to know how corporations are preparing for those potential impacts from climate change — otherwise they might lose their investments. However, most times there is very little information available for investors telling them how long-term companies are thinking about climate change and how well they are prepared against its implications. To help companies disclose information consistently to their investors, a group of private sector experts came together in January 2016 under the G20’s Financial Stability Board as the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) and developed a framework that can be used by companies across the world and by all industries. The more companies use this framework for consistent and comparable disclosure, the easier it will be for investors to incorporate climate-related information into their decision-making. The framework — the TCFD recommendations — were published in June 2017. Since then, the Task Force has been working on encouraging companies to implement the recommendations as well helping investors utilize the new company disclosures. They have also put out supplemental Status Reports which include industry examples and analysis.

Timely and accurate corporate information is essential for financial market efficiency. Decreasing information asymmetry between insiders and the public contributes to better investment decisions. Numerous studies examined the extent to which asset prices change in response to the arrival of new information in the market. Here we portray the picture that emerges from literature regarding the impact of information on cost of equity, liquidity, and trading volume. We focus on the source of information (firm disclosure vs. external entities), and we differentiate between pricing-relevant and pricing-irrelevant information (the former is related to a firm’s future prospects) and between hard and soft information. Further, we refer to the impact of news stories depending on their sentiment, and we examine the impact of printed publications versus online media. We also discuss the mere effect of the amount of disseminated information, regardless of its content.