The world of mergers and acquisitions are often fraught with change, loss of identity and uncertainty for the workers who remain. The consolidation of work-groups can result in new roles, unfamiliar faces, new social structure and the introduction of foreign processes. The need to quickly...

I analyze the allocation of the power to decide on hostile takeovers between directors and shareholders. My contribution is to show who actually has power in a takeover and what factors are at work to give such power. Although directors are traditionally considered to be in charge in deciding...

A great merger wave occurring in the United States between 1897 and 1903 was the single most important event in a process that yielded the pattern of managerial control and dispersed share ownership which currently distinguishes America's corporate economy from arrangements in most other...

Leveraged buyouts (LBO) are generally explained in terms of a governance mechanism that disciplines management. It is operationalized by increasing the leverage of a firm, which has an implicit consequence of constraining management in the use of free cash flows. However, under a relatively new...

Acquirers do not benefit from hiring the CEOs of firms they buy, either in terms of merger announcement returns or long-run operating performance. This is especially true when the retained CEOs exhibit inferior quality (as proxied by target firm industrial efficiency or the target CEO's...

Using a sample of target firms that do not delist from the stock market after a majority takeover, we investigate the effect of the target CEO's departure on their firms' subsequent financial performance. We find that CEO departures have a positive effect on the target firms' long-run operating...

This study examines how Specified Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) have been used as a financing tool for the shipping industry in period 2004-2013. SPACs that focused on acquisitions in the shipping industry statistically have similar characteristics as the population of SPACs that entered...

Specified Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs) are a special type of public companies currently available to investors in financial markets. As an investment vehicle, modern SPACs are traced back to 18th century England where blank checks were first mentioned as blind pools during the infamous...

I use textual analysis of 10-K forms to develop an estimate of the differences in corporate cultures of the combining firms, and find that greater cultural differences between the combining firms lead to higher synergistic gains in mergers. The effect of cultural differences on acquisition...

Does a CEO's experience with mergers matter when her firm becomes a takeover target? We find that shareholders receive higher premiums when their CEO has experience. The evidence suggests this is due to learning rather than innate skills or selection. Consistent with superior negotiation of...