In merger agreements, the seller makes contractual representations and warranties (“reps”) about the state of the target, e.g., attesting to the accuracy of the target’s financial statements. We obtain a proprietary sample of claims for breaches of the reps in acquisition agreements...

How does the possibility of being taken over affect a manager’s voluntary disclosure? This paper analyzes this question in a setting where the manager’s disclosure complements the rival’s expertise and influences the probability the firm is taken over by a rival. The threat of being...

Empirical evidence regarding accrual-based earnings management around mergers and acquisitions has been setting-specific as far as target firms are concerned. This might be due to the fact that target firms cannot always anticipate an acquisition proposal, and thus lack the motive and the time...

Casual observations suggest that bidder managers sometimes pay more than the economic value of target in mergers and acquisitions. This paper provides two empirical findings associated with overpayments in acquisitions among publicly traded U.S. firms during the period of 2003-2011 using the...

We examine the impact of shared auditors, defined as audit firms that provide audit services to a target and its acquirer firm prior to an acquisition, on transaction outcomes. We find shared auditors are observed in nearly a quarter of all public acquisitions and targets are more likely to...

We test whether geographical location, audit quality and equity offering play a role in the earnings quality of Reverse Merger (RM) firms. We provide evidence that, contrary to the popular focus by the business press, earnings management happens in both U.S. and international RM companies. We...

We examine whether the 2005 mandatory adoption of IFRS is followed by an increase in cross-border acquisitions into the adopting countries and whether the association is driven by IFRS per se or by concurrent enforcement changes. Using the exogeneity of a firm's listing status to identify the...

We provide evidence suggesting that managers use financial statement misstatements which improve reported results to facilitate acquisitions. Specifically, we find that firms misstating their financial statements are more likely to make stock-based acquisitions, but not cash-based acquisitions,...

We find evidence that performance — reflected in earnings and cash flows — is transferred from targets to acquirers around acquisitions. Using a sample of 2,128 completed deals from 1985-2010, our results suggest that targets depress performance when investor attention declines once the deal...