This note explores the dramatic fall in receipts of UK Corporation Tax (UKCT) from banks, and the wide gap between the corporation tax accruals recorded in banks' financial statements, and the UKCT receipts recorded by the tax authorities. It reviews changes in tax rates, in operating profits,...

This paper explores some consequences for economic efficiency of creative accounting practices by merging companies. It assumes semi-strong information efficiency in the markets for capital and for corporate control; and/or the use of executive contracts relating pay to accounting profit.Ahead...

Previous studies of the impact of M&A on performance have employed a range of measures of “profitability” or “rate of return”. Sometimes they have provided little in the way of rationalization; and sometimes the most appropriate measures have not been deployed for testing the chosen...

This paper discusses the use of M&A to facilitate earnings management. The accounting procedures we analyse variously create earnings which would not be reported in the absence of M&A; or reduce reported earnings; or shift earnings between accounting periods. The motivation for deploying the...

This paper analyses a problem at the intersection of accounting, law and economics: the economically efficient operation of legal arangements for company failure is undermined because valuations of assets and liabilities become unstable once a firm is distressed. The paper draws on the three...

This paper attempts to tease out some of the reasons why the history of M&A accounting has been so fraught. It compares the different M&A accounting regimes which have been tried over time in UK, US and international standards. It illustrates the quantitative impact of alternative accounting...

Meeks and Meeks (2022, MM for short)* has a question in its subtitle, Why spend ever more on mergers when so many fail? There are three interwoven strands in the book’s answer:First, contracts (explicit and implicit) often reward key players in the M&A market — executives and advisers —...