In 1990, Pennsylvania enacted Senate Bill 1310, containing five provisions designed to make takeovers prohibitively expensive but allowing firms to opt out of some or all of the law's provisions. We find that firms that opted out of SB 1310 had lower insider control of voting rights and were...

We study 120 rights offerings by closed-end funds from 1988–1998. On average, rights offerings are announced when funds trade at a premium. This premium turns into a discount over the course of the offering. The premium decline is more severe when increases in the investment advisor's...

Rising equity volatility, surging energy prices, a weakening dollar, and widening credit spreads are influencing both tactical financing decisions and long-term financial strategy. Amid this turbulence is a quickly changing global M&A landscape that portends long-term opportunities to deliver...

In corporate offices as well as the classroom, there continues to be significant debate about the costs and benefits of debt financing. There is also considerable variation in corporate credit ratings, even among companies as large and successful as those that make up the S&P 500. Many companies...

This paper documents a substantial intertemporal variation in the abnormal returns of U.S. companies acquired by foreign firms over the 1979-1988 period. Returns decrease after 1980, when the 1981 Economic Reform Tax Act was passed, and increase after 1986, when the Tax Reform Act went into...

We compare acquisitions completed with and without investment bank advice over the 1981 to 1992 period. We find that the choice to use an investment bank depends on the complexity of the transaction, the type of transaction (takeovers versus acquisitions of assets), the acquiror's prior...

This report addresses two key questions for today's top executives: Do acquisitions create value for acquirers? And under what circumstances have acquisitions created the most value for acquiring shareholders? 2004 Morgan Stanley.