| Publication |
2011.
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| Summary/Abstract |
For a sample of US stocks in the period 1998-1999, Cooper, Dimitrov, and Rau (2001) report dramatic value increases in the 10 days around the announcement of dotcom name changes. We find much smaller value changes for a sample of Chinese listed firms with changes to internet-related dotcom names for the 1998 to 2002 period. This result is surprising given the high proportion of retail trading in China and the prohibition to short sell Chinese stocks. Also in contrast to Cooper, Dimitrov, and Rau (2001), we find that most of the value increase for our sample firms is realized gradually prior to the announcement. Further investigation reveals that our sample firms experience more frequent CEO-turnover, significant increase in return-on-assets, and involve more restructure activities around the name change event. These results suggest that the value increases for firms with name changes are the consequence of substantial and successful operational changes, and that the name change is simply part of that process, instead of the cosmetic effects of name change or investor mania suggested by previous studies.
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