Building on recent research in social psychology, this paper analyzes the link between the precision of initial cash offers and M&A outcomes. About one-half of the offers are made at the precision of one or five dollars per share, and an additional one-third at the precision of half dollar or...

We show that CEOs exhibit a hometown bias in acquisitions. Firms are over twice as likely to acquire targets located in the states of their CEOs' childhood homes than similar targets domiciled elsewhere. Small, private home-state deals underperform other small, private deals, and the bias is...

Option prices embed predictive content for the outcomes of pending mergers and acquisitions. This is particularly important in merger arbitrage, where deal failure is a key risk. In this paper, I propose a dynamic asset pricing model that exploits the joint information in target stock and option...

We employ a sample of 201 freeze-out tender offers (offers of controlling shareholders to buy all public shares) in Israel to examine how investors' decision (to accept or reject the offer) is influenced by alternative reference prices, some of which are commonly specified in freeze-out offers....

Stock returns around acquisition announcements are widely viewed as being reflective of the net present value created by these transactions. As such, announcement returns should correlate with acquisition outcomes. Using a new measure of realized transaction-level acquisition failure, as well as...

Using a comprehensive sample of reverse merger (RM) transactions, we examine the effects of China's IPO regulations on the prices and returns of its publicly listed stocks. During 2007-2015, unlisted Chinese firms paid an average of 3 to 4 Billion RMB for each listed shell, an amount exceeding...

This study analyzed activism that leads to a merger or acquisition (M&A) of a firm to see its benefits for the shareholders at the target firm as well as its acquirer. It used over thirty years of data to understand the impact of the activists’ demands of strategic significance for the firms....

Option prices embed predictive content for the outcomes of pending mergers and acquisitions. This is particularly important in merger arbitrage, where deal failure is a key risk. In this paper, I propose a dynamic asset pricing model that exploits the joint information in target stock and option...

This article examines the decades-long decline of investor protections enshrined in the Securities Act of 1933, most notably Section 11, which imposes near strict liability on corporate insiders and certain secondary actors, primarily underwriters. The provision, the most potent in the federal...

This study provides evidence suggesting that CEOs’ physical fitness has a positive impact on firm value, consistent with the beneficial effects of fitness on, e.g., cognitive functions, stress coping and job performance. For each of the years 2001 to 2011, we define S&P 1500 CEOs as fit if...