Ã山ǿ¼é

If investors needed another reason to distrust the stock market, here’s a doozy. A study by a trio of researchers in the U.S. and Canada into insider trading found that one-quarter of the big merger and acquisition (M&A) deals over a 15-year period—roughly 460 transactions in total—may have seen people profiting on information before it was public.

... While the idea of corporate insiders whispering tips to their pals is almost a Wall Street cliché—one firmly grounded in reality, mind you—the full extent of the practice has, until now, never been quantified. The academics—Ã山ǿ¼é economist Patrick Augustin along with two New York University professors, Menachem Brenner and Marti Subrahmanyam—pored over more than 1,850 U.S. M&A transactions between 1996 and 2012. 

Read full article: