The Role of Media in Mergers and Acquisitions

Using a novel dataset of news events for 170,000 entities across over 100 countries, we find that media sentiment plays an important role in the market for merger and acquisition. Firms with high media sentiment are more likely to become an acquirer. The effect of media on the likelihood of an acquisition is stronger for cross-border deals, larger firms with fewer financial constraints, and firms with higher market-to-book ratio and more media coverage. Acquirers with high media sentiment experience significantly negative returns post-acquisition, inconsistent with theories of media content as a proxy for new information about fundamental asset values