We contribute to the literature on auditor’s task-specific expertise by examining the role of auditor experience in mergers and acquisitions (M&A), a complicated and increasingly prevalent corporate event that can give rise to misreporting. We find that in industries with more complex...

This study examines how accounting quality of target firms relates to the design of merger consideration in acquisition agreements. The theory suggests that acquirers mitigate adverse selection problems by making the value of merger consideration sensitive to the acquirers’ merger announcement...

Business Combination in form of acquisition brings a lot of enthusiasm on the shareholders and the economy. These are however complex transactions governed by statutory provisions, regulator’s guidelines and professional input. This study explored business combination in the Malawian Banking...

Malawian banking industry has undergone seismic transformation over the past twenty years. It has been two decades of plethora of new entrants followed by acquisitions propelled by minimum paid capital requirements which have forced smaller banks to be absorbed by bigger banks. The barriers of...

Consideration is the sum paid by an acquirer in exchange for shareholding in an investee and is a product of offer and acceptance principle which reflects the wishes of the buyer and seller. The exact number of shares to be purchased is supposed to be unequivocal and what must be paid should be...

Business combination in the banking sector plays a significant role in any given economy as proponents purport that it is a catalyst for attaining economies of scale to realise competitive advantage through cost and quality differential. Opponents postulate that big banks abuse their position...

Purpose: This paper aims to investigate how the passage of the Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX) impacted the likelihood and timing of the decision of leveraged buyout (LBO) firms to exit via initial public offering (IPO) (reverse-LBO) and the mediating effect of reputed private equity (PE)...

Staff retrenchment is one the contentious legal battle an acquirer probably faces because acquired firms so often had run into financial problems and had to lay off some employees who might have been challenging employer’s decision during business combination process. Such legal exposure...

Past research shows that the outcomes of acquisitions of private firms are better than those of public firms. This finding is commonly explained by the price discount due to illiquidity and the higher information risk involved in acquiring private firms. Existing studies do not separate the two...

Regulators and policy makers express concern on the value of a fairness opinion, which is a third-party certification of transaction price in M&As. Prior literature also provides mixed evidence on the implication of fairness opinions. Motivated by this concern and prior research, we examine...