Distress Anomaly and Shareholder Risk: International Evidence

Financially distressed stocks in the U.S. earn puzzlingly low returns giving rise to the distress risk anomaly. In this paper we provide evidence on the performance of distressed stocks in 34 different countries. We find that the distress anomaly appears to exist in developed countries but not in emerging ones. Using cross-country analyses we explore several alternative potential drivers of returns to distressed stocks. We find that the distress anomaly is stronger in countries with stronger takeover legislation, lower barriers to arbitrage, higher information transparency, and easier access to new loans. We find a weak relation between the distress anomaly and debt enforcement risk, and a measure of country-level return skewness. We find no relation between the anomaly and the legal origin of a country. These findings suggest that various aspects of shareholders’ risk play an important role in shaping distressed stocks returns.