This paper aims to verify market reactions to Employee Stock Options
Plans (ESOP) proposals and awards in the Brazilian Stock Exchange from July
1994 to March 2007. In order to achieve such objective, event studies
methodology was applied and the original sample (comprised by all companies
that adopted ESOP during the survey period) was divided according to
employees’ eligibility to ESOP and CEOs bargain power. Using non-parametric
tests (Sign Test e Wilcoxon Rank Sum Test), we could verify that
announcements of ESOP proposals and ESOP awards were not related to positive
abnormal returns. As the opposite, returns around those announcements dates
were negatives, in general. Such pattern could be explained by some
theoretical consequences of ESOP plans: increase in the CEOs risky behavior,
constrains in the dividend policy and CEOs opportunistic behavior by
managing the timing of their voluntary disclosures around stock option
awards. We also found evidences suggesting that employees´ eligibility is
related to abnormal returns. When all employees are awarded, returns are
even more negative. Possible explanations are indirect costs of capital
pulverization and increase in the companies cost of capital due to the ESOP.
Our findings suggest that an ESOP adoption in a poor governance environment
can increase agency problems, instead of aligning CEOs and shareholders
interests.
Este estudo investiga se a política de distribuição de resultados seria capaz de alterar os preços das ações de uma empresa. O objetivo deste trabalho é discutir os impactos do pagamento de proventos sobre os preços das ações, na data ex direito, de empresas maduras e de empresas em expansão, considerando-se ainda o efeito da classe da ação (ordinária ou preferencial) sobre os resultados. Para tal, adotou-se a metodologia de dados em painel, segmentando a amostra a partir dos Mapas Auto-organizáveis de Kohonen. Os resultados revelam que a estratégia de curto prazo de comprar ações na última data com, vender na primeira data ex e embolsar os dividendos é capaz de gerar perdas de capital que superam em até quatro vezes o ganho líquido decorrente do provento embolsado. palavras-chave Proventos, empresas maduras, empresas em expansão, estudo de eventos, Kohonen Maps.
Fernanda Finotti Cordeiro Perobelli
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