Evidence of managerial opportunism in Australia

Abstract

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to test for managerial opportunism, specifically the backdating of executive options, in Australia. Design/methodology/approach - The paper analyses the return behaviour associated with a sample of 161 unscheduled options granted by Australian firms. Specifically, the authors test for differences between a subsample of grants that had late-filed notices (and hence may be subject to backdating) versus those that had notices filed on-time. Findings - Consistent with backdating, it is found that these abnormal post-grant returns persist for a sub-sample of late-filed grants but not for a sub-sample of grants with same-day filing. Furthermore - the authors ..