Study Led by Finance Professor Samir Saadi Awarded Research Development Grant

Research by Samir Saadi focusing on the influence of media coverage on corporate risk-taking behaviour has been awarded $6,000 from the Research Development Program of the University of Ottawa. The aim of this project is to provide insight into three research questions: (1) Does media coverage induce managers to take more or less risk? (2) Does media coverage influence the probability of publicly traded stock experiencing a crash? (3) How does media coverage influence stock price volatility? Professor Saadi and colleagues will carry out their analysis using data from firms included in the S&P index from 1990-2012.

The key objective of the research will be to promote a greater understanding of the linkages between media coverage and firms’ risk-taking as well as firms’ stock prices behaviour. Telfer professors Imed Chkir and Lamia Chourou and Shatanu Dutta of University of Ontario Institute of Technology are co-investigators. Assistant Professor of finance at Telfer, Samir Saadi holds a Ph.D in Finance from Queen's University (2012). His main research interests include IPOs, mergers & acquisitions, payout policy and corporate governance. Professor Saadi’s articles have been published in leading peer-reviewed journals and presented at numerous finance conferences and seminars in North America, Europe and Asia. His work has also been widely cited, including his recent paper on capital budgeting in Canada now cited by several studies and books including four of the most popular corporate finance textbooks (Ross et al, 2013; Booth and Cleary, 2013; Brigham et al, 2013; and Petitt and Ferris, 2013).