Implications of Data Screens on Merger and Acquisition Analysis : A Large Sample Study of Mergers and Acquisitions from 1992-2009

We analyze the characteristics of transactions in a comprehensive set of mergers and acquisitions based on SDC data from 1992 through 2009. We do not impose restrictions found in previous empirical work such as excluding private bidders, small targets or those deals with no target value reported. We show that the scope of mergers and acquisitions activity is much broader than implied in the mergers and acquisitions literature, which tends to oversample larger deals involving publicly traded firms. Further, some results in the large sample are different than in the extant literature. For example, the finding that mergers occur in waves is attenuated with a larger sample, due to the greater presence of smaller and/or non-public firms. Also, acquirers gain in most takeovers even though acquirer announcement returns have decreased threefold from 1992 to 2009