题　目：Crisis Signal or Strategic Shield? Evidence on Firms Engaging External Communication Advisors in Activist Short Campaigns

嘉　宾：Janja Brendel，助理教授，The Chinese University of Hong Kong

主持人：李烁，助理教授，上海交通大学安泰经济与管理学院

时　间：2026年9月23日（周三）16:00-17:30

地　点：上海交通大学安泰经济与管理学院包兆龙图书馆A407

内容简介:

Activist short selling campaigns are salient negative information events that reshape firms’ information environments and attract sustained scrutiny from investors, media, and regulators. Although external communication advisors are increasingly visible in these settings, limited systematic evidence exists on which firms retain such advisors and how they differ from other targets. We examine 1,019 U.S. activist short campaigns from 2002 to 2022 and document cross-sectional differences in short selling pressure, communication dynamics, corporate responses, and subsequent regulatory and legal outcomes. Firms engaging external communication advisors exhibit higher pre-campaign short interest, more positive firm-initiated press release tone alongside more negative independent financial media coverage, and larger increases in firm-side Twitter activity following campaign announcements. They are also more likely to undertake visible actions, including CEO replacement, public equity offerings, and strategic reviews, and to experience higher rates of SEC enforcement actions, comment letters, and securities litigation. Overall, advisor engagement is systematically associated with elevated short interest, more negative independent coverage, and greater regulatory and legal exposure, consistent with engagement occurring in more severe campaigns than with engagement being linked to successful mitigation.

演讲人简介：

Professor Janja Brendel has been an Assistant Professor at CUHK Business School since 2021. She holds a PhD in Accounting from Humboldt University of Berlin (a German Excellence University) and a BSc/MSc in Accounting and Finance from LSE. Her interest in accounting began during a banking apprenticeship at Deutsche Bank. She teaches financial accounting, valuation, and auditing. She was a research/teaching assistant at Humboldt and is a Research Fellow of TRR 266. Before her PhD, she worked as an investment banking analyst in M&A and restructuring at Greenhill, Lehman Brothers, BNP Paribas, and Deutsche Bank, including a stint at Deutsche Bank’s Chinese Joint Venture in Beijing.

Her primary research interests lie in empirical financial accounting, with a focus on firms’ financial reporting and the role of information in capital markets. Recently, her research has concentrated on activist investors, including short-sellers, and the cryptocurrency markets. Her work has been published in leading journals, including The Journal of Accounting Research and the Review of Accounting Studies. Additionally, she has received two government grants in Hong Kong to support her innovative research initiatives.

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