of targets, bidders, and their peers upon takeover announcement, and closing or withdrawal. We distinguish five common M … investors believe in gains through the exploitation of market power by the post-merger entity. In a multinomial logistic model …

Largely constant average acquirer returns over the past four decades mask fundamental changes in the takeover market … the 1980s. Offsetting this increase, the average bidder-specific component has declined. We propose a theory of bidder …-specific synergies to help interpret these opposing trends. In our theory and in the data, acquirer returns increase with the extent to …