IS THE FRIDAY EFFECT A FIRM EFFECT? THE CASE OF CASH-FINANCED ACQUISITION ANNOUNCEMENTS OF UNLISTED FIRMS. EVIDENCE FROM SPAIN

Abstract

Prior evidence shows that investors pay less attention to corporate information released on Friday than to similar information released on other days of the week. This behaviour is consistent with the inattention hypothesis and conflicts with the notion of market efficiency. However, this differential market reaction to announcements on Fridays may be potentially misspecified due to selection bias. We explore this issue for a sample of 192 cash-financed acquisition announcements of unlisted target firms made by listed Spanish firms from 1998 to 2018. We show that, after correcting for selection bias, the reduced market response to Friday acquisition announcements remains.