We examine the economic benefits of acquisitions of U.S. public firms. Estimating revelation biases concerning internal investment opportunities, we find that it produces a significant negative bidder announcement effect, often interpreted as shareholder wealth destruction. Examining exogenously...

This paper introduces a new approach for identifying the ex-ante dates on which the market anticipates both takeovers and their payment forms. This approach predicts when the market receives informative signals about potential takeovers, the variance-covariance of the stock returns shifts. Using...

We evaluate the efficiency of capital deployment for acquiring firms before M&As, defined as the return on invested capital net of the cost of capital, and link this measure to firms' post-acquisition performance. Acquirers with higher, pre-acquisition net returns on investment have superior...

Using a novel dataset that includes estimates of the fair value of the targets' purchased tangible and intangible assets, we demonstrate that private targets have significantly more intangible assets than do public targets. We then develop a valuation model that is based on the fair values of...

To examine the market response to positive revelations of chief executive officer (CEO) quality, this study focuses on CEOs who withdraw acquisition bids when the price becomes increasingly expensive. Firms that withdrawal for price-related reasons earn higher withdrawal returns than firms that...

This paper investigates the role of top management and board interlocks between acquirers and targets. I hypothesize that an interlock may exacerbate agency problems due to conflicting interests and lead to value-decreasing acquisition. An interlock may also serve as a conduit of information and...

This paper determines the effect of ownership structure, governance mechanisms, and legal systems on long term operating performance of acquiring firms in emerging countries. The current work investigates the performance of sixty-nine merger and acquisition deals in emerging market countries....

From 1987 to 2008, riskier firms were more likely to be taken over. Yet, on average, the acquirer declined in value by 2.8% when it bought a "risky target" (the third tercile, having an annualized idiosyncratic volatility of 61% or more), but only by 0.6% when it bought a "safe target" (the...

Acquirers, on average, earn higher announcement-period returns when their targets are privately held than when their targets are publicly traded. We show that private targets have significantly more intangible assets than do public targets. We then develop a valuation model that is based on the...

This study performs a cross-country comparison by examining the large samples of merger and acquisition (M&A) activity in emerging markets (EMs). The underlying purpose is to investigate how market investors react to the M&A deals conducted by acquiring firms with different degrees of corporate...