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.

No abstract

In our global sample of 263,461 deals in 47 countries, 3-day target cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) average 6.9% and bidder CARs average 1.4%. When we impose the common filters used in the literature which restrict the sample to completed acquisitions of public firms, target CARs increase from 6.9% to 13%. Our findings indicate that M&A activity (particularly in deals where control rights are sold) generates value. We also find that the magnitudes of bidder and target CARs in developed countries are higher than those in emerging-market countries.

No abstract

This paper investigates how changes in regulatory and economic environments affect the transparency of banks' financial-statements. Reregulation and a volatile economy make Turkish banks the ideal sample. I disaggregate sources of both hidden and booked capital in Turkish banks traded on the Istanbul Stock Exchange between 1988 and 2006. Hidden capital account for the difference between the accounting and opportunity-cost measures of a firm's net worth. Increases in hidden capital in crisis periods indicate a greater reliance on government-contributed safety-net capital. The increase in hidden capital is more pronounced for large banks. Too-Big-To-Fail policies may explain why large banks are the beneficiaries of government-contributed capital.