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...

The acquisition of information prior to sale gives rise to a hold-up situation quite naturally. Yet, while the bulk of the literature on the hold-up problem considers negotiations under symmetric information where cooperative short-cuts such as split the difference capture the outcome of...

Consequential damage waivers are a frequent part of merger and acquisition agreements involving private company targets. Although these waivers are heavily negotiated, the authors believe that few deal professionals understand the concept of consequential damages and, as a result, the inclusion...

We investigate the interaction between the law’s prohibition of recovery for unrequested benefits, and parties’ incentives at the ex ante stage to acquire information about the harms or benefits of the activities they consider engaging in. We analyze the impact of these interactions on the...

This paper investigates the impact of the target chief executive officer’s (CEO) postmerger position on the purchase premium and target shareholders’ abnormal returns around the announcement of the deal in a sample of bank mergers during the period 1990–2004. We find evidence that the...

-- Public takeovers ; hostile takeovers ; notification requirements ; cash-settled equity total return swaps ; cash swaps ; equity options ; options ; mandatory offer ; insider trading ; capital markets ; regulated markets ; tender offer ; tender offer rules ; announcement obligations ;...

Several top deals already closed, a still highly fragmented industry and strong pressure for further consolidation following the financial crisis renewable energy certainly has become a red-hot topic in M&A. Surveying 220 companies in the solar photovoltaic, utility and financial sector as well...

This paper argues that in revising the Takeover Bid Directive, EU policymakers should adopt a neutral approach toward takeovers, i.e. enact rules that neither hamper nor promote them. The rationale behind this approach is that takeovers can be both value-creating and value-decreasing and there...

Since years, incentives for the management have become a standard upon acquisitions of companies by Private Equity Investors - so-called Buy-Outs. However, until this date there are no empirical studies available on the arrangements of management participations and potential conflicts of...

Shareholder voting on corporate acquisitions is controversial. In most countries acquisition decisions are delegated to boards and shareholder approval is discretionary, which makes existing empirical studies inconclusive. We study the U.K. setting where shareholder approval is imposed...