We find that corporate governance characteristics of acquiring firms (board ownership, board size, and block-holder control) have an economically and statistically significant impact on operating performance changes following mergers. We also show that dispersion of intra-board ownership stakes...

We investigate the relation between corporate governance characteristics of hostile takeover targets and the choice to employ 'harmful' resistance that is not perceived as being motivated by shareholders' interests. We find that harmful resistance is associated with firms where managers have...

The protection provided by antitakeover provisions (ATPs) can be used by managers to undertake acquisitions (M&A) that either reduce their personal risk but worsen shareholder wealth, or those that increase their personal risk but enhance shareholder wealth. We exploit sources of exogeneity at...

Acquisitions by larger firms seem to generate less wealth for acquirer stockholders than acquisitions by smaller firms. In this paper, we re-examine the ‘size effect', but separately for serial and non-serial acquisition. We find sample-selection bias results in a spurious size effect for...

We examine the nature of takeover resistance by investigating the determinants of the choice by target managers to take post-offer actions designed to aggressively frustrate the takeover bid, in preference to choosing passive resistance through tactics that just secure a better offer for...

We find that corporate governance characteristics of acquiring firms (board ownership, board size, and block-holder control) have an economically and statistically significant impact on operating performance changes following mergers. We also show that dispersion of intra-board ownership stakes...

Using instrumental variables, we find that having more antitakeover provisions is not only more likely to prevent a bid but also more likely to cause management resistance in the event of not doing so. The deterrent effect is likely to be decreasing in the cost to rival bidders of acquiring...