A major problem confronting farmer cooperatives merging for the first time is the lack of valuable experience that a prior merger would have provided. This lack of experience results in a decision making environment of imperfect knowledge, both of the necessary postmerger activities to be performed and the timing of their performance. Thus, it was the purpose of this study to provide inexperienced cooperatives with a guide for scheduling uncertain postmerger decisions and activities. Such a guide will enable more rational postmerger decision making and more effective reorganization of merging businesses. The additional information was provided primarily from the historical records of an actual dairy cooperative case merger to which a technique known as PERT (Program Evaluation and Review Technique) was applied to develop a prescriptive model of the postmerger activities and their scheduling for possible use in similar subsequent mergers. The major benefits from using a case study approach was pedagogical in the hope that the results would be more readily adopted in practical use than if a purely theoretical design were used. Furthermore, the results of the study are based on the supposition that the synergistic benefits are greatest when the length of the postmerger decision period is minimized. Uncertainty is alleviated through planning and PERT is a planning tool that can be used to minimize project completion time. However, by applying PERT to historical data much can be learned from the experience of a previous merger. The results of applying PERT to a posteriori case study data provided a prescriptive guide for scheduling postmerger decisions and activities. More specifically, PERT determined the key performance areas of marketing and personnel to be of critical significance following the decision to merge. These areas were determined to be critical with respect to their constituent activity completion times; that is, the sequential activity path determined to be the longest occurred within the marketing and personnel areas. Thus, the expected completion times of the activities within these areas must not be prolonged in order that the merger may be completed on schedule. As determined by PERT, all other key performance areas in the case merger were not likely to become bottleneck areas during the postmerger decision period; basically their integration responsibility was one of converting the premerger procedures of the "acquired" cooperatives to that of the acquiring cooperative. Merging cooperatives can realize substantial savings from adapting the methods and findings of this study to their particular situation. Such a course of action will enable a more rapid completion of the postmerger decisions and activities and hasten the realization of the potential synergistic benefits. / Graduation date: 1971

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2005. / Supervisors: Walter Dean Burnham and Peter Trubowitz. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

The purposes of this study are (1) an attempt to set up a standard of measurement whereby an investor can evaluate favorable or unfavorable sales growth of a particular company over a period of years, and (2) to provide a list of companies which have shown unusual ability to grow.

This dissertation is a growth options analysis of high tech mergers. I analyze the impact growth options have on the likelihood of a high tech firm being acquired, the premiums paid for these acquisitions, and the synergies that result from these mergers. I examine how proxies for growth options interact with those for the resources needed to fund growth. A significant part of my analysis involves developing and examining a new growth options proxy, Gamma, the return on investment a firm realizes in growth options value from its R&D expenditures. I find that firms that are better than their peers in converting R&D into growth options value, i.e. they have high Gamma, are more likely to be targeted for acquisition than low-Gamma firms. The premiums paid are impacted most by the characteristics of the deal, primarily when deals are competitive, and GDP growth. The acquirer's Gamma, however, is very significant in predicting premiums. Acquiring firms with high Gamma pay significantly lower premiums. The synergies that result from a merger are measured in short and long run returns, and most mergers result in value destruction to the combined firm. In the fewer than 20% of the mergers that resulted in positive long run abnormal returns, the premium paid and whether the deal was competitive significantly reduced the returns. However the two characteristics that significantly increased returns were the acquirer's Gamma and if the acquirer and target had complementary characteristics for growth options levels and free cash flow. / by Sean M. Davis. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011. Mode of access: World Wide Web. FboU

The purpose of this research was to empirically examine the effect of the establishment of outside audit committees on the objectivity of the management results-reporting practices of those companies that established such committees in response to the New York Stock Exchange mandate effective June 30, 1978. Management income smoothing behavior is taken as a measurable surrogate for the objectivity of the management results-reporting practices. This research involved the testing of one research problem. The research question asks, "Will the establishment of outside audit committees by companies that had no such committees prior to the New York Stock Exchange mandate effective June 30, 1978, be associated with a decrease in the degree of smoothing in the net income series for the period after that date relative to the degree of smoothing prior to that date?" The answer to this question required the selection of an experimental and a control group. Each group was composed of fifty New York Stock Exchange listed firms. Linear and semi-log regression models were used to measure each firm's degree of income smoothing (defined as reducing the variability of a net income series about its trend line). The change in mean square errors of the experimental and control groups was compared using the chisquare and median tests. Neither the chi-square or the median test found a statistically significant increase in the objectivity of the management results-reporting function for the firms that established outside audit committees in response to the NYSE mandate effective June 30, 1978.

The purpose of this study was to determine the scope of degree-granting programs offered by selected United States industrial corporations. A sample was selected randomly from those corporations with five thousand or more employees listed in the 1980 Fortune Double 500. The sample was stratified by industrial type and number of employees. Data were collected through a mail questionnaire sent to specified corporate officers of 330 corporations. Of the 223 responses received, six were not usable for a variety of reasons. The return of 217 questionnaires from the remaining 324 yielded a response rate of 66.97 percent. The questionnaire was formulated according to the research questions posed in the study and was designed to encourage response from corporate personnel. A case study approach was employed to compare the curricula of corporate-sponsored degree programs with traditional collegiate programs. The corporate degree programs analyzed were associate's degree in electronic engineering technology and bachelor's degree in computer science for business (DeVry Institute of Technology, Bell and Howell Education Group), master of software engineering (Wang Institute of Graduate Studies, Wang Laboratories), and the bachelor's degree programs offered by General Motors Institute in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, industrial engineering, and industrial administration. The following five items highlight the results and conclusions of this study: (1) One corporation reported offering four degree programs; five more corporations planned to establish a combined total of nine more degree programs within the next few years. (2) It can be anticipated that within the next five years, eight industrial corporations plan to offer a combined total of nineteen college-level degree programs. (3) The corporate degree programs in existence or being planned tended to be in engineering, computer science, and management. (4) Curriculum analyses of corporate degree programs revealed in this study indicated that these programs were comparable to traditional collegiate programs in most respects. (5) Over one-quarter of the respondents indicated that the corporation either participated with local postsecondary institutions to provide educational opportunities for their employees or had tuition-assistance plans for employees.

This dissertation investigates whether firms strategically disclose accounting restatements by coordinating restatement announcements with earnings releases, delaying the announcement of income-decreasing restatements, or obscuring restatement announcements by failing to disclose news of a restatement on a Form 8-K filing. I examine restatements announced after a Securities and Exchange Commission rule (effective August 24, 2004) that mandates a unique 8-K filing for restatements. Consistent with an attempt to lessen the negative impact of a restatement announcement, I find that when firms package restatement announcements with earnings releases they most often pair small income-decreasing restatements with positive earnings surprises. I also find that monitoring by the SEC decreases the probability of firms' mixing restatement and earnings news. On average, firms delay announcements of income-decreasing restatements longer than announcements of income-increasing restatements, and institutional ownership is positively associated with more timely disclosures of restatement news. I show that firms with weak corporate governance or less external monitoring are more likely to make news of a restatement difficult to find. Restatements performed without a Form 8-K filing are much less likely to be disclosed in a company-issued press release or to receive attention in the business press, and I find some evidence that the initial market reaction to obscure restatement announcements is less negative than the reaction to restatements disclosed transparently. Collectively, these results suggest that even in the presence of strict disclosure requirements, some firms attempt to strategically manage the timing and transparency of restatement announcements and investors do not appear to undo the effects of firms' strategic behavior. / text

No description available.

This thesis presents an empirical investigation of the role of competition in determining (1) bidder firm behaviour in, and (2) the resulting valuation effects of, corporate takeovers. The study is based on the most comprehensive sample currently available of interfirm tender offers for publicly traded U. S. target firms during the period 1971-1990. Corporate takeover contests differ in complex ways with respect to the asymmetric information and bargaining environment, distributions of bidder reservation values and target share ownership, and information acquisition costs. There is substantial theoretical work examining the strategic role of the choice of payment method, bidder elimination and target management resistance, and of particular interest in this thesis, pre-bid acquisition of target shares ("toehold") and its impact on the subsequent tender offer price. Despite a voluminous empirical literature on corporate acquisitions, systematic evidence on the extent and role of bidder toeholds on bidding strategies is sparse. While the toehold has been shown to be prevalent in takeover contests, the extant empirical literature contains few results pointing to the strategic role suggested by theory. The lack of statistical significance may reflect a combination of small samples, weak experimental design, and biases in estimation. This thesis remedies the small sample problem by examining more than 1350 takeover contests in the U. S. from 1971 to 1990. The experimental design is improved by including a larger set of sample controls, and addressing the bias issue by estimating a set of equations which simultaneously determines the toehold and the takeover premium. The wealth effects of takeover contests are estimated as a function of toeholds, the number of bids/bidders, the outcome of the bid, and the target management response. Other empirical issues, including the effect of toeholds on the probability of target management resistance and emergence of a second bid in the contest, are also examined. Finally, a new econometric technique is developed for simultaneously estimating event probabilities and conditional expected event returns in order to determine whether entering the takeover auction, and responding to rival bids for the target shares, on average enhances the wealth of the initial bidders' shareholders.

Edited by Eli Goldston, Herbert C. Morton, and G. Neal Ryland. / Part 1 was originally published as the winter 1969 issue of Daedalus; part 2 contains 8 new articles and a new preface.