Mergers and acquisitions are part of the fabric of business and economic life: they help drive growth in companies of all sizes. Most executives will at some point in their careers experience a takeover, as buyer, seller or intermediary. Yet, despite M&A's obvious attractions, deals often fall...

This paper tests how informed investors with local expertise can affect cross-border deal success using a comprehensive dataset of corporate acquirers' share registers. We posit that deals in which long-term investors have a high level of expertise in the target firm's region are more likely to...

This paper examines the M&A strategy of firms during the first year in office following the appointment of a new CEO and its effect on longer-term firm performance. Using a unique sample of large European listed companies, the results show that CEOs of UK firms execute more deals than their...

The extant empirical evidence suggests that defined benefit (DB) pension obligations, deficits, and costs increase corporate leverage and cost of capital, reduce corporate investment and aggravate valuation uncertainties. In the M & A context, DB schemes of target firms may reduce the takeover...

This paper develops a useful, robust, and reliable scoring methodology to determine a country's capability to develop and sustain mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity on the basis of publically available and continuously updated information. Due to the global economic downturn in 2008-2009,...

This paper develops a new scoring methodology to determine a country's capability to develop and sustain mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity on the basis of publicly available and continuously updated information. The study computes a theoretically grounded maturity index for M&A purposes...