We document a strong positive initial market reaction to merger announcements from bidders with either large earnings growth or significant earnings decline, relative to those with neutral earnings change, reflecting a U-shaped pattern between bidders’ earnings growth and announcement returns....

We evaluate the over-valuation hypothesis and merger arbitrage price pressure hypothesis as potential explanations for the observed negative returns to stock acquirers around merger announcement. Using daily shorting flow data, we show that the majority of the negative announcement returns can...

Using unique, hand-gathered data, this paper examines how public news about the target firmreleased publicly during the private merger negotiation process affects bidding strategies. Weprovide strong evidence that market reactions to information events during the private sale processhave a...

We find that bidder-target stock return correlations positively predict merger synergies, and the predictive power is enhanced when we focus more on idiosyncratic correlations. A measure of idiosyncratic correlation (IDC) between bidder and target firms that controls for all other stocks,...

We show that understanding the role of analysts' forecast bias is central to discovering the behavior that causes some stocks to have high analyst forecast dispersion. This finding is important because stocks with high analyst forecast dispersion contribute significantly to many important...

Firms covered by more analysts are more likely to become takeover targets and more likely to enter deals in which their acquirers initiate private merger negotiations. Moreover, when equity analysts' pre-acquisition price forecasts imply greater target undervaluation, target firms are more...