Cash acquirers are an interesting sub-group of acquirers. Whereas the overall evidence seems to suggest the majority of mergers and acquisitions destroy shareholder value in the long term, cash-financed acquisitions do not appear to do so. Yet this seems at variance with the prediction from...

Although Jensen (1988) argues that high levels of free cash flow and unused borrowing capacity are likely to encourage low-value mergers, the “pecking order” theory offers a different perspective, where managers conserve cash flow to undertake positive NPV investments. We argue that the...