THE IMPACT OF ACQUISITIONS ON COMPANY PERFORMANCE: EVIDENCE FROM A LARGE PANEL OF UK FIRMS

This paper investigates the impact of acquisitions on companyperformance using a large panel of UK-quoted companies observedover a long time period. The results indicate that acquisitionshave a detrimental impact on company performance and that companygrowth through acquisition yields a lower rate of return thangrowth through internal investment. Given the penchant for takeoversin the UK, as witnessed by the record level of takeovers onthe London equity market last year, our findings suggest thatneither firms nor shareholders are being best served by theexisting financial and industrial system.     

Sex Differences in Labour Turnover in the Australian Public Service*

This paper reports the use of a large data set of Australian government employees in an analysis of the influence of sex on voluntary labour turnover. Estimates derived from a conventional quit model are used to obtain ceteris paribus sex specific quit probabilities. These suggest that once other relevant variables are held constant, the expected quit differences between men and single women are significantly reduced. The analysis indicates clearly that the use of aggregate statistics may substantially exaggerate turnover differences attributable to sex.     

PREDICTING FINANCIAL DISTRESS IN THE AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL SERVICE INDUSTRY

This paper looks at the ability of a relatively new technique, a non-linear extension of the Granger thick model concept, hybrid ANN's, to predict failure of financial service firms in Australia. These models are compared with traditional statistical techniques and conventional ANN models. The results suggest that hybrid neural networks outperform all other models in predicting failure for up to two years prior to the event. This suggests that for researchers, policymakers and others interested in early warning systems, hybrid network may be a useful tool for predicting firm failure.