We create a novel dataset of the terms of poison pill plans to examine their prevalence over time. Consistent with the hypothesis that poison pills have responded to the increase in hedge fund activism, recent adoptions have characteristics and provisions that appear to target hedge funds, such...

Takeover defenses, also called antitakeover provisions, reflect decades of innovation in the interplay of offensive and defensive tactics in the market for corporate control. This paper summarizes research on how firms use takeover defenses and how defenses affect firm value and operations....

Using 636 large acquisition attempts that are accompanied by a negative stock price reaction at their announcement (“value-reducing acquisition attempts”) from 1990-2010, we find that, in deciding whether to abandon a value-reducing acquisition attempt, managers' sensitivity to the firm's...

One of the most consequential events in any firm’s lifetime is a major acquisition. Because of their importance, mergers and acquisitions (M&As) have been an enormous area of research. However, the vast majority of this research and survey papers summarizing this research have focused on...

Managers often claim that an important source of value in acquisitions is the acquiring firm's ability to finance investments for the target firm. This claim implies that targets are financially constrained prior to being acquired and that these constraints are eased following the acquisition....

This paper explores whether corporate acquirers consider environmental reputations whenplanning and structuring takeovers. We find that firms with an environmentally toxic reputation,which have the greatest potential for negative spillovers to their merger partners, have a lowerassociated...

We examine completed M&A deals with large acquirer shareholder dollar wealth gains at announcement. We find that large-gain acquisitions are (i) typically “bolt-on” deals that are small relative to the acquirer's size; (ii) transaction-specific events (not firm- nor CEO-specific events);...