English

Optimal execution of ASR contracts with fixed notional

Trading and Market Microstructure 2016-05-05 v2

Abstract

Be it for taking advantage of stock undervaluation or in order to distribute part of their profits to shareholders, firms may buy back their own shares. One of the way they proceed is by including Accelerated Share Repurchases (ASR) as part of their repurchase programs. In this article, we study the pricing and optimal execution strategy of an ASR contract with fixed notional. In such a contract the firm pays a fixed notional FF to the bank and receives, in exchange, a number of shares corresponding to the ratio between FF and the average stock price over the purchase period, the duration of this period being decided upon by the bank. From a mathematical point of view, the problem is related to both optimal execution and exotic option pricing.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1410.1481,
  title  = {Optimal execution of ASR contracts with fixed notional},
  author = {Olivier Guéant},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1410.1481},
  year   = {2016}
}