Insider Trading and regulation: A look at bank holding companies

With the passage of the Insider Trading Sanctions Act (ITSA) of 1984, regulators have attempted to reduce insider trading activities through their increased power to impose stiffer penalties on violators. In their study of trading activity associated with tender offers, Arshadi and Eyssell (1991) find that insiders went from being heavy net purchasers of their own firms' stock prior to tender offer announcements to being weak net sellers. The special status of bank holding companies suggests that the trading patterns of insiders would differ between bank holding companies and non-bank holding companies. The results in this paper indicate this to be the case as there is no change in the trading patterns for insiders of bank holding companies between the two regulatory periods.