It is commonly believed that women are more likely to seek advice than men; for example, on aspects of health or asking for directions when lost. This paper investigates whether women’s relatively greater propensity for advice seeking extends to important business decisions, specifically those...

This paper examines the association between female director representation on corporate boards and mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Using acquisition bids initiated by the S&P 1500 firms during 1997-2009, we find that each ten-percent representation of female directors on a corporate board is...

We document the implications of an LBO for the target firm's peers in terms of follow-on acquisitions, alliances, investment, and governance changes. LBOs tend to lead overall merger activity, predicting both more LBOs and strategic acquisitions in the industry. LBOs predict significant changes...

We provide evidence that managers and controlling shareholders time management buyouts (MBOs) and freezeout transactions to take advantage of industry-wide undervaluation. Portfolios of industry peers of MBO and freezeout targets show significant alphas of around 1% per month over the 12-month...

We investigate investor reactions to merger and acquisition rumors. Employing a large and comprehensive sample of acquisition rumors, we find that the rumor target firms experience average cumulative abnormal returns of 4.78% over the three days around the rumor, and abnormal returns of -4.48%...

Does director gender influence CEO empire building? Does it affect the bid premium paid for target firms? Less overconfident female directors less overestimate merger gains. As a result, firms with female directors are less likely to make acquisitions and if they do, pay lower bid premia. Using...

We use accounting theory to develop a new measure of the quality of mergers and acquisitions, implied return-on-equity improvement (IRI), which quantifies the minimum improvement in the target’s accounting returns after acquisition needed to justify the offer price. We validate our measure by...