"Spending on M&A has, in aggregate, grown so fast that it has even overtaken capital expenditure on increasing and maintaining physical assets. Yet McKinsey, the leading management consultancy, reports that "Anyone who has researched merger success rates knows that roughly 70% fail". The idea...

The evolution of the Chinese takeover market and its integration with the international takeover market are analysed in three ways. First, the paper charts the legal and institutional changes in China in the last two decades to develop a decentralised “Anglo-Saxon” takeover market. Second,...

This study finds that pro-forma earnings forecasts by bidding firms during acquisitions are associated with a higher likelihood of deal completion, expedited deal closing, and with a lower acquisition premium − but only in stock-financed acquisitions. Analysts also respond to these forecasts...

The accounting literature has found evidence that acquirers in stock-for-stock M&A have typically managed earnings upwards ahead of a bid. Other literatures have concluded that, when stock prices are high and rising, M&A is higher, more M&A is financed with stock, market sentiment and...

Meeks and Meeks (2022, MM for short)* has a question in its subtitle, Why spend ever more on mergers when so many fail? There are three interwoven strands in the book’s answer:First, contracts (explicit and implicit) often reward key players in the M&A market — executives and advisers —...