Reaction of bank stock prices to loan-loss reserve announcements

Significant own and contagious stock-price effects of bank LLR announcements exist despite the fact that these accounting adjustments have no concurrent cash-flow implications. Consistent with expected information effects, negative abnormal returns surrounding LLR announcements tend to be much more important in the case of regional as opposed to money-center banks. Accounting measures of bank soundness, and possibly regulatory pressure, appear to influence the market's assessment of LLR information for both announcing and nonannouncing banks. © 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers.