【报告主题】Voluntary Disclosure, Activist Communication and Intervention
【主讲嘉宾】贾雪，墨尔本大学会计学助理教授
【报告时间】2023年6月27日 14:00
【报告地点】会计学院108室
【内容提要】
Besides hostile intervention, activist shareholders aiming to make changes in target firms also use more friendly approaches such as communicating with the firm management. Managers can strategically influence activist shareholders’ perception about the firm and therefore their choice of engagement. This paper analyses how a manager’s voluntary disclosure strategy affects an activist shareholder’s strategic choice of engaging with the firm either via communication or through direct intervention. The manager prefers to withhold information when it induces more communication from the shareholder. We find that depending on the threat of intervention, the manager can choose to never disclose his private information, or only disclose good news and withhold bad news to the shareholder. The full nondisclosure and the partial disclosure equilibria are sustained in our setting in the absence of any direct disclosure frictions. Further analysis shows that although nondisclosing firms are more likely to be targeted by the activist, they are likely to experience more communication but less intervention from the activist shareholder relative to disclosing firms.