Abdullah Kumas
In May, Abdullah Kumas, assistant professor of accounting at the Robins School of Business, was chosen to present his paper, “Insider Trading Activity Around Auto Recalls,” at the 2015 DePaul University Finance and Economics Conference in Chicago, Ill.
“The conference focused on capital markets research and attracted some great papers. It was an honor to be chosen to present. People from all over the country were in attendance, and I was greatly looking forward to the feedback from the audience.” Kumas’ paper was one of six featured at the conference.
He explained the inspiration for writing the paper. “In November of 2014, I read a Wall Street Journal article explaining how the CEO of a top automobile company was aware of safety issues with their products long before recalls were announced publicly. The news triggered a couple questions in me; how long do insiders know about recalls before the issues are reported to the government and announced publicly, and do insiders trade differently during these time-sensitive periods? I teamed up with a group of colleagues to take a deeper look at these questions.”
Kumas shared, “The paper examines whether top auto company executives exhibited abnormal selling behavior throughout different stages of auto recalls. We pored through publicly available auto recall data and insider trading data and ultimately found that these insiders were selling stocks well before they filed their recalls with the federal authorities.”
“My main goal was to get good feedback for the paper at the conference, and I certainly feel we’ve accomplished that,” he added. “Besides presenting the paper, the highlight of the conference was the question-and-answer session with Eugene Fama, Nobel laureate in economics. He spoke mainly on the European financial crisis as well as the impact of divorce on the U.S. economy. The opportunity to hear him speak about his own experiences and thoughts on the future of finance and economics made the conference that much more of an incredible and invaluable experience.”
Upon his return to Richmond, Kumas reflected on his time at the Robins School. “I’ve had a truly great experience since I came here in September 2013 from Dallas, Texas. I have wonderful colleagues and really good students, and when it comes to attending conferences and getting our work out there, the school is always supportive of everything we want to do.”