An important focus of the research on mergers and acquisitions is the conditions under which acquisitions create value for the acquiring firm's shareholders. Given that the acquisition process is plagued by serious issues of information asymmetry, which are exacerbated in the context of...

Value in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) derives from the synergistic combination of an acquirer and a target. We advance the existing conceptualization of synergies in three ways. First, we develop a theoretically-motivated, parsimonious typology of five distinct sources of synergy based on two...