Core institutions of UK corporate governance, in particular those relating to takeovers, board structure and directors' duties, are strongly orientated towards a norm of shareholder primacy. Beyond the core, in particular at the intersection of insolvency and employment law, stakeholder...

In a large sample of U.S. M&As over 1990-2007 we find that value is created when risk-takers absorb risk-avoiding target firms, but it is destroyed when bidders with a conservative investment policy takeover risk-taking target firms. This value effect is particularly pronounced when bidders are...

Over 20 years, M&A contracts have more than doubled in size – from 35 to 88 single-spaced pages in this paper's font. They have also grown significantly in linguistic complexity – from post-graduate “grade 20” to post-doctoral “grade 30”. A substantial portion (lower bound ~20%) of...

Gaining access to technologies, competencies, and knowledge is observed as one of the major motives for corporate mergers and acquisitions. In this paper we show that a knowledge-based firm's probability of being a takeover target is influenced by whether relevant specific human capital aimed...

We conduct an event study to assess the stock market evaluation of public takeover announcements. Unlike the majority of previous research, we specifically focus on acquisitions targeted at newly public IPO-firms and show that the stock market positively evaluates these M&As as R&D. However,...

Although acquisitions of high tech entrepreneurial firms are of great popularity, the limited empirical evidence shows that these acquisitions often lead to dismal results in that a large number of acquired inventors leave the company after the acquisition and those that remain exhibit poor...

​In the presence of high uncertainty and limited experience, can observing the actions of other acquiring predecessors help firms make better acquisition decisions? Using a sample of cross-border M&As conducted by US acquirers in developing countries, we document a positive and significant...

An important component of corporate governance is the regulation of significant transactions – mergers, acquisitions, and restructuring. This paper (a chapter in Oxford Handbook on Corporate Law and Governance, forthcoming) reviews how M&A and restructuring are regulated by corporate and...

Takeover attempts from raiders with prior stakes in the target company (toeholds) are frequent in the market for corporate control. In this context, we propose a simple and realistic selling mechanism with an agenda of exclusive negotiations that discriminates against larger-toehold raiders....