We study shareholder returns for firms that acquired five or more public, private, and/or subsidiary targets within a short time period. Since the same bidder chooses different types of targets and methods of payment, any variation in returns must be due to the characteristics of the target and...

Existing research shows that significantly more acquisitions occur when stock markets are booming than when markets are depressed. Rhodes-Kropf and Viswanathan () hypothesize that firm-specific and market-wide valuations lead to an excess of mergers, and these will be value destroying. This...

Existing literature has shown that periods of high merger activity are correlated with high market valuations. Significantly more acquisitions occur when stock markets are booming than when markets are depressed. Using methodologies robust to recent criticism we show that viewed through an...

It has long been argued that dividends are used as a signal of future earnings or as a means of distributing excess cash. However, the empirical tests of these two hypotheses have generated inconclusive results. One reason for these inconclusive results is that no model combines both the...

Collar offers are merger offers using all stock as the method-of-payment that specify a range within which the bidder's price can fluctuate. In this paper the wealth effects associated with collar offers are determined, and cross-sectional regressions are employed to determine if this offer type...

We find dividends do matter to shareholders, but more in declining markets than advancing ones. Dividend-paying stocks outperform non-dividend-paying stocks by 1 to 2% more per month in declining markets than in advancing markets. These results are economically and statistically significant and...

We examine short selling around dividend announcements and ex-dividend dates. Contrary to our initial expectation, we do not find abnormally low (high) short-selling activity prior to announced dividend increases (decreases), which runs counter to the argument that short sellers have the ability...