Private equity buyouts have become a common element in the industrial development process. I survey the literature on the real economic effect of buyouts: employment, wages, productivity, and long-run investments. Employment tend to marginally fall after a buyout in most countries studied, with...

There is some controversy on the key sources of success in the private equity model and on how this business model affects the portfolio companies. We investigate financial distress risks of European companies around the buyout event in the period between 2000 and 2008. In addition, we analyze...

This paper examines the pattern and profitability of institutional trades around takeover announcements. We find that the trades of funds as a group, either before or after takeover announcements, are not profitable. However, funds whose main broker is also a target advisor are net buyers of...

Private equity buyouts have become a common element in the industrial development process. I survey the literature on the real economic effect of buyouts: employment, wages, productivity, and long-run investments. Employment tend to marginally fall after a buyout in most countries studied, with...

Merger and Acquisition (M&A) activities are not well-anticipated corporate events in the equity market. Do institutional investors possess material non-public information before M&A announcements? Using a novel methodology that infers high frequency institutional trading, this paper investigates...

This paper examines whether one of the most important participants in the takeover market, the institutional investors of target companies, suffers from the disposition effect; and if so, how this selling bias influences the takeover outcomes. I report robust evidence that target institutional...

This study examines how institutional investors' cost bases impact takeover offer prices and the likelihood of deal success. We find evidence consistent with the ‘disposition effect' - a reluctance to realize losses. After controlling for pre-bid prices, cost basis has a positive association...

This study reports how country risk and macroeconomic conditions influence the wealth gains of U.S. financial firms involved in international mergers and takeovers. The findings suggest that U.S. financials experience weakly significant wealth gains around announcement date. The wealth gains are...

This study examines whether the “soft” information present in merger and acquisition announcement press releases contains incrementally valuable news relative to traditional “hard” data and analyst generated information. We use Diction, a textual-analysis program, to construct measures...

This paper examines changes in acquirer and target companies' Credit Default Swap (CDS) spreads as a proxy for default risk around official mergers and acquisitions (M&A) announce-ments. Related literature extensively documents wealth effects triggered by M&A from the shareholders' perspective,...