Spread behavior around board meetings for firms with concentrated insider ownership

For a set of firms with concentrated insider ownership, we find that (a) the bidask spread changes significantly around the board meeting dates, and (b) the actual number of transactions by insiders increases following the board meetings. We also find that there is a statistically significant relationship between spread and the number of insider trades surrounding the board meeting dates. Furthermore, neither an increase in the number of insider transactions nor any significant relationship between insider trading and the spread is observed for the same set of firms around non-board meeting dates.