Shareholder Benefits from Corporate International Diversification

This study provides further evidence on the rates of return realized by the shareholders of multinational firms relative to those of purely domestic firms. The results indicate that the risk-adjusted returns realized by the shareholders are identical across the two groups except where the MNC operates in competitive foreign markets. In that case, MNC shareholders experience negative abnormal returns. The study also provides further evidence on the risk-reduction effect of international diversification. The results fail to support the hypothesis that the beta is a convex function of the degree of international involvement. Finally, the paper provides some preliminary evidence on the effect of corporate international diversification on shareholders' returns. It is found that abnormal returns rise by some 18 percent during the 14 months preceding the initial foreign diversification.     

The dynamics among G7 government bond and equity markets and the implications for international capital market diversification

This paper investigates potential international capital market diversification gains from relationships between global government bond and equity markets. Its primary contributions are (1) including both government debt and equity markets in the investigation of global diversification gains, (2) basing the analysis on real, risk-adjusted returns, and (3) evaluating both variance decompositions and impulse responses, as well as long-term relationships for international U.S. dollar investors. We find the cointegration, variance decomposition, and impulse response function results indicate interdependence and reduction in gains to international diversification.     

Wealth Effects of Acquiring Financially Distressed Firms

The purpose of the present research is to study target and acquirer shareholder wealth effects of acquisition announcements in which the target is financially distressed. The abnormal returns and the dollar abnormal gains to both the target and acquiring firms are examined according to whether the mode of acquisition is a merger or a tender offer. A regression analysis is also undertaken to examine the importance of the mode of acquisition, an industry effect, and tax variables in determining the abnormal dollar gains in acquisitions of financially distressed targets.     

Why Some Firms Use Collar Offers in Mergers

Collar offers are merger offers using all stock as the method–of–payment that specify a range within which the bidder's price can fluctuate. In this paper the wealth effects associated with collar offers are determined, and cross–sectional regressions are employed to determine if this offer type is a significant determinant of abnormal returns. Results indicate that collar offers are associated with significantly positive abnormal returns for the target firm, even greater than those of firms receiving cash offers, but significantly negative returns for the bidder. These results raise an interesting question: why do some bidders make collar offers? Since the immediate wealth gains are strictly for the target and bidders making collar offers have returns insignificantly different than those making fixed stock offers, bidders must be utilizing collar offers for non–wealth related reasons. Using existing theories regarding the method–of–payment choice, various hypotheses for why firms may make collar offers are presented and tested using a multinomial logit analysis. The choice of collar offers seems to be significantly tied to the relative size of the merger, uncertainty regarding the bidder's value, and the target's and bidder's pre–merger insider ownership percentages.     

Shareholder Value Creation in European M&As

This paper looks at the value generated to shareholders by the announcement of mergers and acquisitions involving firms in the European Union over the period 1998–2000. Cumulative abnormal shareholder returns due to the announcement of a merger reflect a revision of the expected value resulting from future synergies or wealth redistribution among stakeholders. Target firm shareholders receive on average a statistically significant cumulative abnormal return of 9% in a one‐month window centred on the announcement date. Acquirers’ cumulative abnormal returns are null on average. When distinguishing in terms of the geographical and sectoral dimensions of the merger deals, our main finding is that mergers in industries that had previously been under government control or that are still heavily regulated generate lower value than M&A announcements in unregulated industries. This low value creation in regulated industries becomes significantly negative when the merger involves two firms from different countries and is primarily due to the lower positive return that shareholders of the target firm enjoy upon the announcement of the merger. This evidence is consistent with the existence of obstacles (such as cultural, legal, or transaction barriers) to the successful conclusion of this type of transaction, which lessen the probability of the merger actually being completed as announced and, therefore, reduce its expected value.     

Do Capital Structure Adjustments by Takeover Targets Influence Acquisition Gains?

We link debt issuances by target companies around takeover announcements to enhanced target bargaining power in negotiations with bidders over merger synergy gains in completed takeovers. Announcements of debt issuances by targets—especially new bank loans—are associated with more positive target equity returns relative to those made by nontargets, particularly for debt issuances immediately surrounding the takeover announcement. At least some of these gains to targets come at the expense of bidder shareholders, as bidder equity abnormal returns at target debt issuance are negative. We further show that targets issuing debt are primarily those with relatively low acquisition abnormal returns, consistent with initially poor target bargaining power. Subsequent debt issuances by targets increase the likelihood of positive adjustments to acquisition premiums offered by acquirers.     

Another look at the role of the industrial structure of markets for international diversification strategies

This paper re-examines the extent to which gains from international diversification are due to differences in industrial structure across countries. Recent papers by Roll (1992), Journal of Finance 47, 3–42 and Heston and Rouwenhorst (1994), Journal of Financial Economics 36, 3–27 investigate this issue and find conflicting evidence. Using a new database, the Dow Jones World Stock Index, with coverage in 25 countries and over 66 industry classifications, we decompose comprehensively both country and industrial sources of variation. We confirm that little of the variation in country index returns can be explained by their industrial composition. We also uncover differences in the proportion of variation in industry index returns that is captured by country and industry factors and discuss the implications for global diversification strategies.     

Are the gains from international portfolio diversification exaggerated? The influence of downside risk in bear markets

The fundamental rationale for international portfolio diversification is that it expands the opportunities for gains from portfolio diversification beyond those that are available through domestic securities. However, if international stock market correlations are higher than normal in bear markets, then international diversification will fail to yield the promised gains just when they are needed most. We evaluate the extent to which observed correlations to monthly returns in bear, calm and bull markets are captured by three popular bivariate distributions: (1) the normal, (2) the restricted GARCH(1,1) of J. P. Morgan’s RiskMetrics, and (3) the Student-t with four degrees of freedom. Observed correlations during calm and bull markets are unexceptional compared to these models. In contrast, observed correlations during bear markets are significantly higher than predicted. Higher-than-normal correlations during extreme market downturns result in monthly returns to equal-weighted portfolios of domestic and international stocks that are, on average, more than two percent lower than those predicted by the normal distribution. If the extent of non-normality during bear markets persists over time, then a US investor allocating assets into foreign markets might want to allocate more assets into foreign markets with near-normal correlation profiles and avoid markets with higher-than-normal bear market co-movements.     

International portfolio diversification: Currency,industry and country effects revisited

We examine the relative importance of country, industry, world market and currency risk factors for international stock returns. Our approach focuses on testing the mean-variance efficiency of the various factor portfolios. An unconditional analysis does not show significant differences between country, industry and world portfolios, nor any role for currency risk factors. However, when we allow expected returns, volatilities and correlations to vary over time, we find that equity returns are mainly driven by global industry and currency risk factors. We propose a novel test to evaluate the relative benefits of alternative investment strategies and find that including currencies is critical to take full advantage of the diversification benefits afforded by international markets.     

International index funds and the investment portfolio

Financial advisors often recommend that investors diversify their investments internationally and also use mutual funds with the lowest expenses. Recently it has been possible to use both of these strategies by purchasing an international index fund. This study considers international index funds as a means of portfolio diversification. Performance is evaluated using monthly return data on nine international indexes from January 1989 through December 1997. Returns are measured against the S & P 500 index returns. The results of statistical tests suggest that international index investing does not offer superior returns compared to the S & P 500 index but diversification benefits do exist.     

Bondholders’ wealth effects in domestic and cross-border bank mergers

The recent credit crisis and the increased internationalization of the European banks have given the debate about the role of national regulators a renewed urgency. We therefore investigate the determinants of bondholders’ abnormal returns for both domestic and cross-border bank merger announcements that involve European acquirers for the period 1998–2002. We find that bondholders’ abnormal returns are higher for Domestic Mergers than cross-border mergers, in direct contrast to evidence from equity prices where no difference is found. Further investigations in which we control for the changes in market power for example suggest this result may be indicative of investors perceiving Domestic Mergers as increasing the probability of a government bailout in case of distress. Banks’ bondholders also experience higher abnormal returns when the country of the partner bank has stricter rules in relation to forbearance of prudential regulations than the own country, and when functional diversification between lending and fee/trading activities increases.     

Loss aversion,asymmetric market comovements,and the home bias

Loss aversion has been used to explain why a high equity premium might be consistent with plausible levels of risk aversion. The intuition is that the first-order-different utility impact of wealth gains and losses leads loss-averse investors to behave similarly to investors with high risk aversion. But if so, should those agents not perceive larger gains from international diversification than standard expected-utility investors with plausible levels of risk aversion? They might not, because comovements in international stock markets are asymmetric: correlations are higher in market downturns than in upturns. This asymmetry dampens the gains from diversification relatively more for loss-averse investors. We analyze the portfolio problem of such an investor who has to choose between home and foreign equities in the presence of asymmetric comovement in returns. Perhaps surprisingly, in the context of the home bias puzzle we find that loss-averse investors behave similarly to those with standard expected-utility preferences and plausible levels of risk aversion. We argue that preference specifications that appear to perform well with respect to the equity premium puzzle should be subjected to this “test”.     

The Impact of Merger Bids on the Participating Firms' Security Holders

This paper investigates whether merger bids have an impact on the wealth of the participating firms' bondholders and stockholders. Monthly and daily bond and stock returns are calculated relative to the announcement date of a merger bid for a sample of conglomerate mergers. The results show that while the stockholders of target firms gain from a merger bid, no other securityholders either gain or lose. To provide direct evidence on the existence of “diversification effects” and “incentive effects,” we test whether the bondholders' returns are dependent upon the correlation between the returns of the merging firms and whether the size of the bondholders' and stockholders' returns in individual mergers are correlated. The results are consistent with a capital market that efficiently resolves conflicts of interest between stockholders and bondholders.     

A Conditional Assessment of the Relationships between the Major World Bond Markets

This paper uses a bivariate GARCH framework to examine the lead‐lag relations and the conditional correlations between 10‐year US government bond returns and their counterparts from the UK, Germany, and Japan. We find that while mean and volatility spillovers exist between the major international bond markets, they are much weaker than those between equity markets. The results also indicate that the correlations between the US and other major bond market returns are time varying and are driven by changing macroeconomic and market conditions. However, in contrast to the finding that the benefits of international diversification in equity markets evaporate during high‐stress periods, we find that the benefits of diversification across major government bond markets do not decrease during periods of extremely high bond market volatility or following extremely negative US and foreign bond returns.     

Market segmentation and international diversification across country and industry portfolios

We conjecture that partially segmented stock indexes that are characterized by low correlation with the world market are mainly priced by local factors and should produce abnormal returns relative to a global asset-pricing model. This implies a negative relation between correlation and future index returns in the presence of segmented indexes. Empirical evidence confirms such a relationship for the sample of industry indexes, suggesting a heterogeneous segmentation. However, we do not observe a similar pattern for country indexes. In addition, the international diversification potential of industries does not vanish during volatile periods. The hypothesis that the negative relationship should be stronger for the more segmented subsamples that are characterized by small market size and emerging country origin is verified for the industry sample. Thus, cross-industry diversification is superior to mere cross-country diversification.     

The effect of merger anticipation on bidder and target firm announcement period returns

This paper examines investors' anticipation of bidder and target merger candidacy and if investor anticipations about candidacy affect the distribution of value between bidder and target firm shareholders. We find that bidder firms can be predicted more accurately than target firms. To investigate how merger announcement period returns are distributed among bidder and target shareholders, we control for different degrees of predictability in bidder and target selection and find that the difference between bidder and target firm three-day cumulative abnormal returns around a merger announcement decreases significantly. Thus, the evidence supports the hypothesis that the asymmetry in investor anticipations about merger candidacy causes disparity in bidder and target firm announcement period abnormal returns.     

Cross-ownership,returns, and voting in mergers

We show that institutional shareholders of acquiring companies on average do not lose money around public merger announcements, because they hold substantial stakes in the targets and make up for the losses from the acquirers with the gains from the targets. Depending on their holdings in the target, acquirer shareholders generally realize different returns from the same merger, some losing money and others gaining. This conflict of interest is reflected in the mutual fund voting behavior: In mergers with negative acquirer announcement returns, cross-owners are significantly more likely to vote for the merger.     

International Asset Pricing and Portfolio Diversification with Time-Varying Risk

We test the conditional capital asset pricing model (CAPM) for the world's eight largest equity markets using a parsimonious generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) parameterization. Our methodology can be applied simultaneously to many assets and, at the same time, accommodate general dynamics of the conditional moments. The evidence supports most of the pricing restrictions of the model, but some of the variation in risk-adjusted excess returns remains predictable during periods of high interest rates. Our estimates indicate that, although severe market declines are contagious, the expected gains from international diversification for a U.S. investor average 2.11 percent per year and have not significantly declined over the last two decades.     

How Do Stock Markets in the US and Europe Price Efficiency Gains from Bank M&As?

This paper examines whether the stock markets price changes in operating efficiency as a result of bank mergers and if the premiums paid by the acquiring banks also reflect these changes. The sample covers mergers and acquisitions consummated in the US and Europe during the period of 1997 to 2003. Changes in cost and profit efficiency are calculated using the non-parametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method 1 year prior and 3 years following the merger announcement. Evidence suggests a significant relation between the announcement-period abnormal returns and the post-merger profit efficiency changes. Results also indicate that bank managers are likely to pay a higher premium for those M&A transactions that can bring about greater efficiency gains, particularly on the profit side. Further, although acquirer shareholders in the US and Europe appear to react differently to the announcement of a bank merger, our results for target shareholders suggest that regional differences might be less important than the degree of capital market development in explaining wealth effects.     

Market reaction to the merger announcements of US banks: A non-parametric X-efficiency framework

This paper investigates the short-term market reaction of nine profit-efficiency, pre-classified merger deals of US banks over the time period from 1992 to 2003. The findings show that mergers combining low efficiency acquirers and targets create significant market returns following the merger event, while mergers combining the least efficient acquirers with moderately efficient targets diminish the acquirer's wealth more than any other type of merger. Furthermore, findings show that acquirers generally lose about 2.5% of their wealth upon the merger announcement while targets experience, on average, significant market returns of 15.5% following the merger announcement.The findings of the cross sectional analysis show that the CARs of acquirers are positively related to their technical efficiency and geographic diversification, while targets' CARs are negatively related to both target size and revenue efficiency.