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The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of major non-economic events, such as the announcement of Greek national parliamentary elections during the period 2000-2009, and search for stock manipulation and methods to detect and recover ill gotten assets. The Financial Sector in Greece is one of the most important and fast growing sectors during recent years and accounts to about 16.17-17.74 per cent of gross domestic product. The ten largest Greek banks listed in the Athens Stock Exchange, accounted to 38.34 per cent of the whole capitalisation of the Athens Stock Exchange during year end 2009.

By using event study methodology and Market Model and analyzing data of all Greek bank stocks prices listed in Athens Stock Exchange, before and after the announcement of four Greek national parliamentary elections during period 2000-2009, we find interesting results about stock market manipulation.

Using daily data from the Athens Stock Exchange, the results of this paper claim that the four Greek national parliamentary elections during the period 2000-2009, had no statistically significant effect on the Greek banks stocks. The results show that Cumulative Average Abnormal Returns (CAARs) were slightly positive or negative for Greek banks’ stocks, but not statistically significant in 5 and 10 per cent confidence levels. Results show no manipulation effect in banks’ stocks even if single-party governments in Greece caused elections early, sudden or even opportunistic timing, having an incentive to attempt to manipulate stocks to increase their chances of re-election.

Results show that CAARs were slightly positive or negative for Greek banks stocks, but not statistically significant in 5 and 10 per cent confidence levels, but when illicit funds or assets have been acquired from stock manipulation, as small as can be, then one fact remains constant. Proceeds from illicit activities must be disguised in some way to avoid being discovered and then being recovered. Especially, during current the financial crisis, debt crisis and the extraordinary liquidity support measures taken by the European Central Bank (ECB), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Commission to support Greek economy, using methods to detect and recover ill gotten assets are extremely important. Indirect methods such as net worth analysis, bank deposit analysis, expenditure method or sources and application of funds analysis, to detect ill gotten assets, and then when ill gotten income and assets from bank stock manipulation are found, a restraining order or court order will help to recovery assets by freezing and finally confiscating them by two types of forfeiture – criminal and civil forfeitures. Establishing a code of conduct informing employees of the risks and consequences of insider trading, creating a culture of honesty and high ethics and implementing Controlled Foreign Corporation legislation to cope with off-shore companies trading, can help to recover ill gotten assets.

The paper examines if there is banks stocks manipulation around announcement of Greek national parliamentary elections during the period 2000-2009; suggesting methods to detect and recover ill gotten assets and improving the current position of the Greek economy. Findings offer important positive implications for investors, political analysts and society as a whole, as Greek banks stocks show that they are not subject to political risk and manipulation and that there are methods to detect and recover ill gotten assets. A stable bank sector is prerequisite for economy growth.

This paper investigates the issue of whether financial market liberalization announcements in emerging economies have had any effects on the efficient operation of their equity markets. The issue is empirically examined in the case of Greece, and its emerging stock market, the Athens Stock Exchange (ASE). The sequence of tests conducted, ranging from tests of structural change to several efficiency tests, suggest that the Greek equity market was weak‐form efficient before these announcements were made. Hence, the ASE was operating as a random walk hinting that investors could not engage in systematically profitable ventures because future long‐term returns were independent of past returns. In other words, foreign and local investors guided their strategies based on the fundamentals and not on speculative grounds.

The aim of this paper is to detect whether there are companies listed in the general index of Athens Stock Exchange Market that possibly conduct earnings manipulation during 2017–2018.

The paper is based upon the Beneish model (M-score), which consists of eight variables to examine the probability of financial statement fraud related to earnings manipulation for 40 companies listed in the Athens Stock Exchange Market. Any company with an M-score −2.22 or above is likely to be a manipulator whereas any company that scores −2.22 or less is unlikely to conduct earnings manipulation.

After calculating the M-score for each company, it was found that 33 (out of 40) companies had M-score values lower than −2.22. Therefore, 82.5% of the sample is considered rather unlikely to conduct earnings manipulation whereas 17.5% of the companies listed in the general index of Athens Stock Exchange Market is likely to manipulate its earnings.

In this paper, all institutions related to financial services were left out of the sample because of the fact that M-score cannot provide reliable results when applied on similar companies.

Beneish model offers a probability of financial fraud and can be therefore used as a supplementary test for auditors, fraud examiners or even national regulators such as the Hellenic Accounting and Auditing Standards Oversight Board or the Hellenic Capital Market Commission. The results of this paper can contribute to the literature concerning financial fraud in Greece during 2017–2018 because no relevant recent researches have been published yet.

The purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate the different market‐making systems found in most developed capital markets and to provide guidance to emerging market regulators for a possible implementation of such a system.

The paper looks closely at the market design of seven developed countries focusing on the obligations and privileges of market makers. Through a case study and empirical evidence the paper identifies advantage and disadvantage of a possible implementation of a similar design to an emerging market.

The paper identifies three forms of market making applied today: the quote‐driven, the centralized and non‐centralized systems. Four factors are proposed that regulatory authorities in emerging markets should consider when deciding whether, and which of, the three market‐making systems they should implement. These are: current exchange design and the costs of restructuring, international and domestic investors' sentiment towards the exchange, size of the emerging market and the market designs in countries hosting the target foreign capital.

The paper looks at the implementation of a market‐making system in an emerging market. Further research may investigate other ways of how emerging markets authorities can restructure their markets into more efficient, compatible and trustworthy financial venues in order to attract both domestic and foreign investors.

The area of emerging markets' microstructure design and market quality is still relatively under‐studied. We provide evidence of the challenges and benefits of the implementation of a market‐making system in those markets.

The aim is to evaluate the performance of symmetric and asymmetric ARCH models in forecasting both the one‐day‐ahead Value‐at‐Risk (VaR) and the realized intra‐day volatility of two equity indices in the Athens Stock Exchange.

Two volatility specifications are estimated, the symmetric generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) and the asymmetric APARCH processes. The data set consisted of daily closing prices of the General and the Bank indices from 25 April 1994 to 19 December 2003 and their intra day quotation data from 8 May 2002 to 19 December 2003.

Under the VaR framework, the most appropriate method for the Bank index is the symmetric model with normally distributed innovations, while the asymmetric model with asymmetric conditional distribution applies for the General index. On the other hand, the asymmetric model tracks closer the one‐step‐ahead intra‐day realized volatility with conditional normally distributed innovations for the Bank index but with asymmetric and leptokurtic distributed innovations for the General index.

As concerns the Greek stock market, there are adequate methods in predicting market risk but it does not seem to be a specific model that is the most accurate for all the forecasting tasks.

This paper studies the mandatory or legal prescribed structures and then examines the actual structures of the interim reports (“enimerotika deltia”) of Greek corporates by admission of securities (shares) to The Athens Stock Exchange Market (ASE). Actual disclosure varies within a sample of 113 ASE‐listed firms whose quasi‐annual reports cover almost a decade (1994‐2001). The research is focused on disclosed “topics” and structural aspects influencing the actual extent, form and structure of voluntary information disclosure whether narrative or financial like the role of the branch, the time of admission, the experience, the “marital status” (family‐owned or not) and the academic qualification.

The purpose of the study is to examine overreaction effect in the Chinese stock market after the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2007 for all the stocks listed in Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) Composite 50 index.

To capture overreaction effect in the stock listed at SSE 50 Index, a time series analysis of average cumulative abnormal return within a unified framework is applied for the period of January 2009 to December 2015. From these loser and winner portfolios, contrarian strategy is applied to build arbitrage portfolio, which is the difference of mean reversions between loser and winner portfolios. The portfolio construction is based on a 12-month formation period and 6-month testing period for intermediate-term analysis and. for short-term analysis, 6 month formation and 3 month testing periods. The authors also applied regression analysis to test a return reversal effect for the sampled period.

Results show that contrarian strategy yields positive excess returns for the arbitrage portfolio for most of the testing periods. The intermediate baseline case shows the arbitrage portfolio producing an average excess return of 14.1%, while even the short-term one produces 4%, which is statistically significant at the 5% level. The study finds asymmetrical overreactions in the SSE especially for loser portfolios. The biggest winner and loser portfolios follow the mean reversal effect. Moreover, before-after test for the biggest winner and loser portfolios shows that the losers recovered and beat the market immediately.

The study could benefit government, policy makers and regulators by studying how presence of more individual investors than institutional investors of China stock market leads to more irrational decisions giving rise to volatility. The regulators could build favourable policies for institutional investors to give them incentive to invest more than individual investors through which market volatility could be controlled.

This research contributes to market behaviour research, showing how working under hypotheses of overreaction; gains can be made with contrarian investment strategy through arbitrage portfolios. The authors provide specific additional support for the short and medium-term overreaction in the SSE for the period 2009–2015 using regression analysis.

This research contributes to market behaviour research, showing how working under hypotheses of overreaction; gains can be made with contrarian investment strategy through arbitrage portfolios. We provide specific additional support for the short and medium-term overreaction in the SSE for the period 2009–2015 using regression analysis.

The present research focuses on possible contrasting variables, explaining the actual “marital status” (family‐controlled or family‐owned). The study uses specific law‐prescribed disclosed information in Greek interims reports from corporates by admission of securities to The Athens Stock Exchange Market – ASE. The explanative variables vary among the type of the disclosed information (narrative, administrative and financial). Non‐family firms are “telling” more than “family‐clans” in general, have significantly more relatives in the firm’s management, but not so much staff, whether tertiary educated or not. Finally the family firms are average wise smaller but with more strategic or holistic business orientation.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the performance of three alternative value‐at‐risk (VaR) models to provide suitable estimates for measuring and forecasting market risk. The data sample consists of five international developed and emerging stock market indices over the time period from 2004 to 2008. The main research question is related to the performance of widely‐accepted and simplified approaches to estimate VaR before and after the financial crisis.

VaR is estimated using daily data from the UK (FTSE 100), Germany (DAX30), the USA (S&P500), Turkey (ISE National 100) and Greece (GRAGENL). Methods adopted to calculate VaR are: EWMA of Riskmetrics; classic GARCH(1,1) model of conditional variance assuming a conditional normally distributed returns; and asymmetric GARCH with skewed Student‐t distributed standardized innovations.

The paper provides evidence that the tools of quantitative finance may achieve their objective. The results indicate that the widely accepted and simplified ARCH framework seems to provide satisfactory forecasts of VaR, not only for the pre‐2008 period of the financial crisis but also for the period of high volatility of stock market returns. Thus, the blame for financial crisis should not be cast upon quantitative techniques, used to measure and forecast market risk, alone.

Knowledge of modern risk management techniques is required to resolve the next financial crisis. The next crisis can be avoided only when financial risk managers acquire the necessary quantitative skills to measure uncertainty and understand risk.

The main contribution of this paper is that it provides evidence that widely accepted/used methods give reliable VaR estimates and forecasts for periods of financial turbulence (financial crises).

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of IFRS adoption on financial statement data and their usefulness in Greece. Additionally, the authors examine the effect on the informativeness/usefulness of financial statement data for stock prices in Greece and the effect of the Greek Financial Crisis.

This study examine the effects of IFRS adoption on financial statement data and their usefulness in Greece. Additionally, the authors examine the effect on the informativeness/usefulness of financial statement data for stock prices in Greece and the effect of the Greek Financial Crisis.

The results indicate that several financial ratios were dramatically affected by IFRS adoption in Greece. In contrast to other countries, IFRS has not resulted in improved statistical behavior of these ratios in Greece: the ratios are highly skewed and the normality of their distribution is not improved. Additionally, when examining the usefulness of financial statement data for stock prices in Greece, results indicate that IFRS adoption did not necessarily improve the usefulness of the financial statements. However, the authors do find that since the financial crisis in Greece these IFRS financial statement measures are significant when regressed on stock prices.

The authors are not able to necessarily rule out other causal factors that may have occurred in Greece during the sample period. The authors do look at the financial crisis as a potential confounding factor, but other factors such as political or macroeconomic factors have not necessarily been ruled out. Also, this study only examines the Greek situation.

This study may have implications for other countries in similar situations as that found in Greece – IFRS adoption and severe economic crisis.

To date only the impact of IFRS on earnings, stockholders’ equity, and some financial ratios has been investigated in prior Greek research studies (Hellenic Capital Market Commission, 2006; Grant Thornton, 2006). However, no academic research has been developed in this area. In addition, the authors examine the impact of IFRS on stock prices emphasizing the mandatory financial disclosure and IFRS adoption in a financially and politically distressed country – Greece.