We revisit the long‐horizon abnormal performance of U.K. firms following rights issues and placings over the period 1989–1997. We make the following contributions relative to prior research. First, we use, as far as we are aware, a more comprehensive data set of rights issues and placings than hitherto studied for the U.K. market. We thus exploit the fact that issuing new equity predominantly through rights issues is a feature of the U.K. equity market that differs from the U.S. and other markets, where public offers dominate seasoned equity issues. Second, we study both the pre‐ and post‐offer long‐horizon performance, complementing previous research that focuses only on announcement‐day wealth effects. Third, we apply various metrics and revisit the evidence of long‐horizon post‐offer underperformance reported in previous research. We find, however, little evidence of long‐horizon post‐offer underperformance for U.K. firms following issues of equity through rights issues or by placings.
Using the idea of stochastic dominance, the long-run post-merger stock performance of UK acquiring firms is studied. Performance is compared by using the entire distribution of returns rather than only the mean as in traditional event studies. The main results are as follows: First, it is found that, in general, acquiring firms do not significantly underperform in three years after merger since no evidence of first- or second-order stochastic dominance relation between acquirer and benchmark portfolios is observed. Second, it is found that acquirers paying excessively large premiums are stochastically dominated by their benchmark portfolio implying that overpayment is a possible reason for post-merger underperformance. Consistent with previous studies, it is found that cash financed mergers outperform stock financed ones. Finally, no evidence is observed that glamour acquirers underperform value ones as no stochastic dominance relations between the two. In general, the results underline the importance of examining long-run post-merger stock performance from alternative perspectives.
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