Description

The stock and securities market should, ideally,
react quickly (efficiently) in response to the
public announcement of approval of new drug by the
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the positive
abnormal return may be expected for the sponsoring
pharmaceutical company on and around the event date
i.e. the day of the public announcement of the new
drug approval for marketing. This study has found
the mixed outcomes. Briefly, the findings are: (a)
Existence of statistically significant positive
abnormal returns (AR) for the day following the
events. (b) The cumulative abnormal return (CAR) is
statistically insignificant for the estimates of the
pooled regressions and for some of the individual
pharmaceutical companies. (c) No sign of information
leakage ahead of the events. (d) Some individual
pharmaceutical companies show the existence of
statistically significant positive abnormal returns
(AR) and the cumulative abnormal return (CAR) for
event day and the day after (e.g. Novartis, Abbott,
Schering Plough). These findings may play a
significant role in the decision making process of
mutually exclusive investments in the pharmaceutical
products.