In-process research and development is the value allocated to incomplete research and development projects in acquisitions treated as purchases, and charged to expense by the acquirer at the acquisition date. Researchers have documented the benefits to acquiring companies from large IPRD...

The effects of mergers on the media marketplace have historically failed to live up to dire predictions. Mergers are often a response to technological upheaval and turbulence in the media industry and firms should be allowed to experiment with such alternative business models with the intent on...

The ongoing controversy over Melrose’s purchase of engineering company GKN illustrates many common misunderstandings about how free markets can work to the benefit of all. Shareholders, not politicians, should decide how to run their businesses, including whether a new management team could do...

In 2005, the US Congress challenged the acquisition by CNOOC (a Chinese state-owned enterprise) of Unocal (a US firm). This challenge creates a political barrier for foreign companies to acquire US oil companies. This paper examines the stock price reaction of US oil companies to this political...

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....

We examine the labor market consequences for directors who adopt poison pills. Directors who become associated with pill adoption experience significant decreases in vote margins and increases in termination rates across all their directorships. They also experience a decrease in the likelihood...

In this paper, I tackle the question whether "one share - one vote" should become a European law rule. I examine, first of all the economic theory concerning one share - one vote and its optimality, and the law and economics literature on dual class recapitalizations and other deviations from...

The authors were motivated to write this article by South Korea’s steps to amend its corporate law to permit the use of the shareholder rights plan (poison pill). Poison pills are permitted in some of the world’s most sophisticated economies, and they have engendered strong opinions and...

We construct a dynamic takeover law index using hand-collected data on legal provisions and empirically examine the effect of takeover regulation to protect shareholders on shareholder wealth for bidders and targets in a multi-country setting. We find that a stricter takeover law increases the...