德勤－复旦会计论坛系列280期讲座信息

时间：2026年 6月30日（周二）下午13:30

地点：史带楼503教室

主持人: 刘烨青年副研究员

报告人: Janja Brendel（The Chinese University of Hong Kong）

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

摘要: 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 and significantly more negative independent financial media coverage, while firm-initiated press release tone is directionally more positive but not statistically distinguishable in multivariate tests. These firms also show larger increases in firm-side Twitter activity following campaign announcements, alongside weaker short seller diffusion. They are more likely to undertake visible actions, including CEO replacement, public equity offerings, and strategic reviews, and to experience higher rates of long-horizon SEC enforcement actions, more frequent SEC comment letter activity, and a higher incidence of securities litigation and class actions. Overall, advisor engagement is systematically associated with elevated short interest, more negative independent coverage, and greater regulatory and legal exposure, patterns more consistent with engagement occurring in more severe campaigns than with engagement being linked to successful mitigation. Rather than identifying a causal effect, our evidence characterizes external communication engagement as an observable corre