We study the short- and long-term effects of acquiring targets that are government owned, which we refer to as Government-Owned Corporations (GOCs). Our sample of acquirers consists of US-listed public corporations, while the targets are GOCs based outside the US. In comparison to acquisitions...

We find that the announced withdrawal of mergers involving private targets produces negative and significant valuation effects on the bidder's stock on average. This result is distinctly different from the valuation effects for merger withdrawals involving public targets. These unique results...