How Investors Respond to Emotional Cues at Annual General Meetings: Evidence from Text, Audio, and Video. (Under Review)
By simultaneously analyzing vocal, facial, and textual forms of communication, this study examines market reactions to the information conveyed during the Q&A portion of annual general meetings (AGMs). The findings indicate that shareholders' attention during this segment impacts market outcomes. Notably, vocal cues are found to be significant predictors of the two-day cumulative abnormal returns (CAR). Moreover, the evidence suggests that visual cues predominantly explain CAR, surpassing the influence of other forms of communication.
Conferences:
2025 Southern Finance Association (SFA) annual meeting, Orlando, Florida
Acquirer ESG Ratings Uncertainty & Merger Outcomes (with Amir Gholami and Mohammad Ali Fallah).
ESG ratings differ sharply across providers, leaving investors uncertain about firms’ ESG performance. Using a large sample of mergers and acquisitions by US public acquirers from 2003 to 2020, we examine whether uncertainty about an acquirer's ESG profile conditions the relation between acquirer ESG and merger outcomes. We find that acquirers with high ESG ratings experience higher returns at the merger announcement only when rating disagreement is low. The announcement effect is concentrated among acquirer firms held primarily by dedicated institutional investors, consistent with long-horizon investors rewarding ESG performance only when they can measure it. High-ESG acquirers with low rating uncertainty are more likely to complete their deals, earn higher long-run buy-and-hold abnormal returns, and exhibit larger post-merger improvement in operating performance.