Can Trading Restrictions Explain the Performance of Free-Bonus Issues?

This article investigates the relation between market’s response to corporate events and trading restrictions in a unique setting of free-bonus issues in Korea. Specifically, bonus-seeking investors face the trading restrictions that they must hold their current shares until ex-date to receive new shares, and cannot trade non-listed new shares until pay-date, while stock price is adjusted on the ex-date according to the bonus ratio. Moreover, investors face short-sale ban between the ex-date and pay-date. These trading restrictions reduce potential liquidity suppliers in the market, and it causes the excess demand for the stock. We hypothesize that the greater the trading restriction, the higher stock price. We find positive abnormal returns around both announcement date and ex-date, and strong positive relation between event returns and the degree of trading restriction measured by bonus ratio. Moreover, significant negative returns are observed near the pay-date as trading restrictions are expected to disappear. This article provides an evidence that trading restriction, which is one of market frictions, contributes to explaining the abnormal returns around corporate events.