Do Long-Term Shareholders Benefit From Corporate Acquisitions?

Using 947 acquisitions during 1970–1989, this article finds a relationship between the postacquisition returns and the mode of acquisition and form of payment. During a five-year period following the acquisition, on average, firms that complete stock mergers earn significantly negative excess returns of ?25.0 percent whereas firms that complete cash tender offers earn significantly positive excess returns of 61.7 percent. Over the combined preacquisition and postacquisition period, target shareholders who hold on to the acquirer stock received as payment in stock mergers do not earn significantly positive excess returns. In the top quartile of target to acquirer size ratio, they earn negative excess returns.     

The Operating Performance of Firms Conducting Seasoned Equity Offerings

Recent studies have documented that firms conducting seasoned equity offerings have inordinately low stock returns during the five years after the offering, following a sharp run-up in the year prior to the offering. This article documents that the operating performance of issuing firms shows substantial improvement prior to the offering, but then deteriorates. The multiples at the time of the offering, however, do not reflect an expectation of deteriorating performance. Issuing firms are disproportionately high-growth firms, but issuers have much lower subsequent stock returns than nonissuers with the same growth rate.     

Financial Distress and Corporate Performance

This study finds that highly leveraged firms lose substantial market share to their more conservatively financed competitors in industry downturns. Specifically, firms in the top leverage decile in industries that experience output contractions see their sales decline by 26 percent more than do firms in the bottom leverage decile. A similar decline takes place in the market value of equity. These findings are consistent with the view that the indirect costs of financial distress are significant and positive. Consistent with the theory that firms with specialized products are especially vulnerable to financial distress, we find that highly leveraged firms that engage in research and development suffer the most in economically distressed periods. We also find that the adverse consequences of leverage are more pronounced in concentrated industries.     

Borrow Cheap,Buy High? The Determinants of Leverage and Pricing in Buyouts

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, international sample of buyouts from 1980 to 2008, we find that buyout leverage is unrelated to the cross‐sectional factors, suggested by traditional capital structure theories, that drive public firm leverage. Instead, variation in economy‐wide credit conditions is the main determinant of leverage in buyouts. Higher deal leverage is associated with higher transaction prices and lower buyout fund returns, suggesting that acquirers overpay when access to credit is easier.     

THE IMPACT OF NEW PRODUCT ANNOUNCEMENTS ON FIRM VALUE IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY PRODUCING INDUSTRIES: AN EXAMINATION OF INDUSTRY-LEVEL EVOLUTIONARY ERAS

We explored the market reaction to new IT product announcements by the hard drive manufacturing industry in relation to that industry's evolutionary cycle of innovation. In the short-term, there was no effect. In the long-term however, announcements made during an era of incremental technical change had more favorable reactions than announcements made during an era of ferment EXCEPT where those announcements represented an attempt to develop the emerging technology rather than further developing the existing dominant design.