Insider Trading and the Greek Stock Market

The Relationship of Insider Trading Announcements, Ownership Structure and Corporate Governance: An Event Study Analysis of Athens Stock Exchange Market Technology Firms

“…Our paper adds to the relevant literature on corporate governance in numerous ways. First of all, our work extends the limited work performed on the subject for Greece (Lekkas, 1998;Leledakis et al, 2010;Thalassinos et al, 2012;Antoniadis et al, 2017Antoniadis et al, , 2019. Second, our survey focuses on one sector, and by comparing it with similar studies, can provide evidence of different insider behavior in different sectors.…”

“…Legal framework, concerning insider trading, was mainly introduced in Greece, long after 1989 as a result of the integration of European Union legislation that made mandatory for all its members to apply the European Community Insider Trading Directive (89 592 EEC of November 13, 1989), by incorporating it in the Greek national law. Before that time Lekkas (1998) characterized the framework as inadequate and -dark‖, where insider trading was not simply a common practice but the status quo and modus operandi of the listed firms in ATHEX. It must be commented that a lot of progress has been made since then and Corporate governance reporting in Greece has improved substantially during the last two decades (Nerantzidis & Tsamis, 2017).…”

“…Corporate Governance in Greece appeared as an issue in the early 1990s but was formally introduced in April 1999, when the OECD published the Principles of Corporate Governance to their members, that would be the basis for the Blue Book on Corporate Governance that would be the basis for the Greek corporate governance framework (Spanos, 2005;Nerantzidis & Filos, 2014). This reform was in order since the framework for investors' protection from insiders was beyond inadequate, leading to extreme cases of shareholders' wealth expropriation (Lekkas, 1998).…”

“Mimickers” Of Corporate Insiders And Testing For Market Efficiency: The Case Of Greece

“…This is also the first study to examine whether Greek outsider investors can obtain excess and abnormal returns by "mimicking" Greek insider investors' trading activity. The Greek business environment is a "small world" where everybody knows each other and the same individuals serve different constituencies under multiple roles, such as bank managers, company consultants, fund managers, or partners in a stockbroker firm (Lekkas, 1998). Even though the use of insider information, regardless of how it is acquired, is punishable under article 30 of law 1806/1988 by at least a three month jail sentence a and a fine, and even though Greece was one of the first EU countries to integrate its legislation with the 89/592 directive of the European Commission on insider trading imposing a fine of five times the amount of illegal profits, insider trading in the Greek Stock Market is common practice.…”

Analyzing Insider Trading from the Perspectives of Utilitarian Ethics and Rights Theory

“…Lekkas (1998) provides a brief summary of the arguments that have been made for and against insider trading. Bainbridge (2000) also summarizes the pro and con arguments and provides a bibliography.…”