In the 1990s, European merger regulation (EMR) was biased against foreign acquirers, especially if the deal harmed domestic rivals (i.e., protectionism). In 2002, the Court of First Instance overturned three prohibitions by the European Commission (EC) and criticized its economic analysis. These...

Why do regulatory authorities scrutinize mergers and acquisitions? The authorities themselves claim to be combating monopoly power and protecting consumers. But the last two decades of empirical research has found little supporting evidence for such motives. An alternative is that Mamp;A...

This study examines the impact of CEO duality on firms' internal capital allocation efficiency. We observe that when the CEO is also chair of the board, diversified firms make inefficient investments, as they allocate more capital to business segments with relatively low growth opportunities...

This article revisits the protectionism hypothesis related to the European merger regulation (EMR). In the 1990s, EMR was biased against foreign acquirers, especially if the deal harmed domestic rivals (i.e., protectionism). At the end of the 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st, the...

CEO narcissism affects the M&A process. More narcissistic target CEOs obtain higher bid premiums. Acquirer shareholders react less favorably to a takeover announcement when the target CEO is more narcissistic. Among acquiring CEOs, narcissism is associated with initiating deals and negotiating...

The paper examines cross-border takeovers through the lens of currency risk management. Using a sample of 152 large cross-border deals undertaken by listed French firms, the study document that, acquirers are firms with higher exposure to target currency prior to the takeover announcement. The...

On February 1, 2008, Microsoft offered $43.7 billion for Yahoo. This offer was a milestone in the battle between Microsoft and Google to control the Internet search industry. The announcement accompanied a substantial decrease in Microsoft's stock price. Investors apparently considered the bid...

Recent academic studies indicate that acquirers' cumulative abnormal returns (CAR) decline from deal to deal in acquisitions programs. Does this pattern suggest hubristic CEO behaviors are significant enough to influence average CAR patterns during acquisitions programs? An alternative...

The idiosyncratic risk is a key input of the standard event study method. The recent literature has suggested that the idiosyncratic risk is not stable through time, and it has increased significantly in the nineties. This paper investigates to what extent the event study method is affected by...

Recent empirical papers report a declining trend in the cumulative abnormal return (CAR) of acquirers during an Mamp;A program. Does this necessarily imply that acquiring CEOs are infected by hubris and are not learning from previous mistakes? We first confirm the existence of this declining...