This paper presents new empirical evidence suggesting that the market evaluates acquisition announcements in the context of the firm's investment policy. When a firm with superior prior internal investment purchases another, market participants often learn from the acquisition, that internal...

We exploit the arrival of industry-wide synergistic merger waves to identify whether classifiedboards deter takeover bids. In a stylized model, we show that when target classified boards arecostly to bidders, their negative effect on takeover likelihood is more pronounced during mergerwaves....