Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether ex ante board connections and director retention result in agency costs to target company shareholders in the form of reduced payment in mergers and acquisitions transaction. Design/methodology/approach: The authors employ detailed...

Purpose: This paper aims to examine whether agency costs predict disciplinary takeover likelihood for the UK listed companies between 1986 and 2015. Design/methodology/approach: Using survival analysis, the approach is to identify candidates for disciplinary takeover on the basis of Tobin’s Q...

Using a sample of 186 referrals between 1965 and 2006, we analyse the abnormal returns experienced by UK bidding companies when a decision is made by UK regulators to refer a merger or acquisition for inquiry and when the decision is published by the regulator. We find evidence of disagreement...