The paper further contributes to our understanding about the role of societal trust in influencing mergers outcome. Using a large sample of cross-border mergers across 56 countries between 1985 and 2014, we show that, conditional on announcement of cross-border mergers, larger differences of...

Bribery is a key consideration in cross-border takeovers. Using exogenous implementations of anti-bribery laws cross 41 countries, I find that criminalizing acquirers for foreign bribery reduces aggregate cross-border M&A activities by approximately 30%, acquirers' gains by over half, and bid...

This paper examines whether global insurance mergers and acquisitions (M&As) create value for shareholders by conducting an event study of M&A transactions for the period 1990-2006. Insurance acquirers realized small positive cumulative average abnormal returns (CAARs), whereas targets realized...

We test the hypothesis that foreign direct investment promotes corporate governance spillovers in the host country. Using firm-level data from 64 countries during the period 2005-2014, we find that cross-border M&A activity is associated with subsequent improvements in the governance of...

Private equity funds pay particular attention to capital structure when executing leveraged buyouts, creating an interesting setting for examining capital structure theories. Using a large, detailed, international sample of buyouts from 1980-2008, we find that buyout leverage is unrelated to the...

We review historical and current research on mergers and acquisitions. The literature is extensive. After a discussion of earlier survey articles (our “survey of the surveys”), we provide a review of more than 120 M&A related-articles published in leading finance journals since 2011. A basic...

We find that acquirers create higher shareholder returns when advised by investment banks with more experience in the target industry. This finding is stronger when acquirers face more difficulties understanding and evaluating the targets. Further analyses show that these banks help acquirers...

Does the pre-deal geographic overlap of the branches of two banks affect the probability that they merge, post-announcement stock returns, and post-merger performance? We compile information on U.S. bank acquisitions from 1984 through 2016, construct several measures of network overlap, and...

A common suggestion for facilitating cross-border investment is to partner with a firm in the target nation. Unfortunately, high quality partners are not always available. We hypothesize and test whether investment syndicates consisting of nationally diverse private equity (PE) investors provide...