TY - JOUR AU - Bigelli, Marco AB - The positive market reaction at the announcement of most European rights issues can be explained by two major factors which distinguish them from a US public offering: active insiders, and a quasi‐split effect which signals a large increase in the dividend yield. An analysis of 428 Italian rights offerings and an event study involving 82 observations in the 1980–94 period show that Italian insiders are completely ‘active’, and almost 85% of the equity rights issues result in a dividend yield increase, which corresponds to the quasi‐split effect in approximately 40% of the issues. The dividend yield rises, on average, by a significant +61% after a combined rights offering and by a significantly lower +20% following a fully‐paid rights issue. The market reaction to the announcement is significantly positive for combined rights offerings (+2.77%) and positive, but not significant, for the whole sample (+0.79%). The dividend increase signalled by the quasi‐split effect explains almost 30% of the abnormal returns' cross‐sectional variation and it is the only significant explanatory variable. TI - The Quasi‐split Effect, Active Insiders and the Italian Market Reaction to Equity Rights Issues JF - European Financial Management DO - 10.1111/1468-036X.00063 DA - 1998-07-01 UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/wiley/the-quasi-split-effect-active-insiders-and-the-italian-market-reaction-9sz2oKafuL SP - 185 VL - 4 IS - 2 DP - DeepDyve ER -