This study examines how and why investors change the use of their information sources in valuation between book value and earnings after mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in both pre- and post-SFAS 141(R) periods. We find that investors generally put less weight on earnings but more weight on book...

The accounting literature has found evidence that acquirers in stock-for-stock M&A have typically managed earnings upwards ahead of a bid. Other literatures have concluded that, when stock prices are high and rising, M&A is higher, more M&A is financed with stock, market sentiment and...

Under U.S. GAAP, firms recognize assets acquired in business combinations at fair value. Similarly, in taxable asset acquisitions firms adjust the tax basis of assets to fair value. Managers can increase the present value of future tax savings by allocating a greater portion of the purchase...

I examine the long-term valuation consequence of investment in mergers and acquisitions on acquiring firms through the “anticipation effect,” in which forward-looking prices embed investors' expectations about the profitability of firms' future acquisitions. Using a sample of firms with past...

The Nasdaq Stock Market's enforcement activities offer a unique setting for investigating the consequences of changes in corporate governance as evidenced by deficiency notices. We document significant negative abnormal returns in response to Nasdaq deficiency notices for audit committee and...

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...

Following a merger or acquisition, a target firm's effective tax rate decreases on average by 3 percentage points. This decline is as high as 8 percentage points when the acquiring firm is tax aggressive. Further, target firm profitability decreases, particularly in the case of targets having a...

We examine the governance transfer effect of corporate blockholders in a sample of 892 block acquisitions across 42 countries from 1990 to 2008. Using earnings management as a proxy for corporate governance outcome, we find that target firms' earnings management is aligned with that of block...

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...

We study how securities analysts influence managers' use of different types of earnings management. To isolate causality, we employ a quasi-experiment that exploits exogenous reductions in analyst following resulting from brokerage house mergers. We find that managers respond to the coverage...