Abstract:
Following the outbreak of a regional war, the Israeli capital markets regulator, ISA, introduced a temporary regulatory exception allowing reporting corporations traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) to postpone the filing of their quarterly reports at will. This intervention raises questions at the intersection of law and finance concerning the value of information, responses to withheld information, and opportunistic behaviors by market participants. By utilizing empirical methods, I find that even corporations unaffected by the war used the regulatory relief, and that market response was limited, raising doubts regarding the efficiency of the market under these circumstances. This paper aims to inform decision makers who consider how to provide regulatory response to external shocks such as wars or other catastrophes.