Mergers and acquisitions continue to enjoy importance as strategies for achieving growth, although their success in creating shareholder value remains contested. The aim of this research was to evaluate whether, in the long-run, acquiring companies created or destroyed value by evaluating the differences between pre- and post-acquisition firm performance, using, abnormal share price performance, operating financial performance and intrinsic value performance metrics. This research used a non-representative, judgemental sample of 29 JSE listed firms to conclude that, on average, mergers and acquisitions destroy value within two years post-acquisition, although some evidence was found in support of acquiring firm value creation in the third year after the acquisition. Results indicated a significant -6.62% decline in acquiring firm average cumulative average abnormal return (ACAAR) between 504 trading days before and after acquisition announcement dates. This finding reversed in year three, resulting in a positive ACAAR of 8.76%. Similarly, average intrinsic value (AIV) performance indicated that between one year before and one year after the acquisition, AIV deteriorated with a significant -0.131. However, between year one and two after the acquisition, AIV recovered by 0.112. Overall evidence indicated positive and significant AIV growth of 0.370 between one year before and three years after the acquisition. The research found insignificant results for the pre and post-acquisition evaluation of industry-adjusted cash-flow return on all assets (IACRAA). / Dissertation (MBA)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) / unrestricted

This study examines the specific ways in which private equity firms influence their portfolio companies to enhance their value, with a focus on the relationship between the level of retained ownership and post-IPO performance. Private Equity firms influence their portfolio companies in specific ways to enhance their value. Private Equity firms are typically limited partnerships, and to realize the value created during the life of the investment, the exit strategy is crucial. An initial public offering is stated as the preferable exit. However, private equity firms usually stay invested in their portfolio companies for up to several years after an initial public offering. Their retained ownership is crucial for underpricing at the IPO and performance post-IPO. This study aims to discover this relationship and to determine its effects. It will contribute to understanding how the portfolio companies' price changes on the first day of trading and their performance, in the long run, is affected by the stake held by the private equity firms. This research will try to clarify the current uncertainty about the effect of underpricing that prevails. It will also fill the existing gap in the academic literature about performance. It can also be potentially helpful for investors. Given knowledge about how retained ownership by PE firms affects underpricing at the IPO and performance post-IPO, this study can help investors to make better investment decisions. However, it should not be seen as investment advice but rather as a contribution to increasing the investor's understanding and knowledge. Publicly listed portfolio companies in the Nordic region constitute the sample for the analysis, and pooled OLS is the econometric method used in this study. We utilized a panel dataset for performance and obtained 2411 unique observations. The long-run performance has been measured as 36 months following the IPO. Our findings indicate a positive relationship between the level of ownership held by the PE firm and both underpricing and performance. These relationships are both statistically significant on the 1% level. Control variables were also included to capture other possible factors that might impact our dependent variables. The positive relationship between the level of ownership held by the PE firm and performance was in line with previous similar research and our expectations. However, the relationship between the PE firm's level of ownership and underpricing was the opposite of what we expected. Previous research has also presented contradictory results, making it difficult to predict the relationship. We hope our results have contributed to clarity regarding underpricing and broadening existing literature about performance for private equity-backed companies.

Cette thèse s'intéresse au rôle des analystes financiers lors de la couverture des introductions en bourse dans un contexte international. Nous traitons de la valeur informationnelle des couvertures des analystes et de leur conséquence sur la performance à long terme des entreprises nouvellement introduites en bourse. Nous examinons si les recommandations des analystes financiers permettent de réduire le comportement irrationnel des investisseurs en situation de forte incertitude. Nous espérons qu'en réduisant les asymétries d'informations, les analystes financiers aident les investisseurs à mieux cibler la valeur de l'IPO. Cette thèse s'articule autour de deux parties : la première est consacrée au positionnement théorique et à nos hypothèses de recherche ; la seconde se focalise sur la vérification empirique d'un échantillon d'IPOs internationales (Etats-Unis, Angleterre, Allemagne et France) sur la période 1991 à 2005. Les résultats révèlent une sous performance des IPOs plus sévères pour les orphelines (sans couverture des analystes) que pour les non orphelines. Il apparaît que la couverture des analystes est importante pour les IPOs mais que le marché n'en perçoit pas toute la valeur. D'autres analyses soulignent que cette meilleure performance des non orphelines provient du nombre élevé de couvertures. Nous établissons que les recommandations des analystes sont significativement reliées à la performance à long terme des IPOs. Ainsi, nous vérifions le rôle crucial des analystes financiers dans la production et l'interprétation des informations. / This thesis explores the role of financial analysts' coverage on IPOs in an international context. We deal with the informational value of research coverage and the consequence on long run performance of newly public firms. We examine whether financial analyst recommendations allow alleviating the irrational investors' behaviour in the context of strong uncertainty. We expect that by reducing the information asymmetry, financial analyst recommendations help investors to define progressively the true value of the IPO. The thesis is organized in two main parts: the first part presents a survey of literature and define research hypothesis. The second part consists in an empirical validation of an international sample of IPOs (US, United Kingdom, Germany and France) over the 1991-2005 period. The results reveal that long run underperformance is much severe for orphans' IPOs (without financial recommendation) than non orphans' IPOs. The evidence suggests that analyst coverage is indeed important to issuing firm but the market do not fully incorporate the perceived value of this coverage. Further analysis reveals that this outperformance by non orphan stems from high coverage. We establish that analyst recommendations are significantly related to long run performance of IPOs. Hence, we corroborate the crucial role of financial analysts in producing and interpreting IPOs' financial releases.

This dissertation includes two chapters that investigate the role venture capitalists (VCs) play in the underpricing and in the long-run performance of IPOs. The first chapter focuses on the underpricing of IPOs and attempts to determine the role that VCs play in this underpricing process. The evidence is consistent with a view that VCs agree to underpricing to ascertain benefits from both "grandstanding" and "spinning." The second chapter examines the long-run performance of IPOs and tries to determine the role that VCs play in the development of IPOs. Here, the evidence suggests that VC-backed IPOs appear to have better access to capital than non-VC-backed IPOs, but the long-run performance of VC-backed IPOs is generally mixed.

In the first essay titled "Divestitures and Acquisition Probability", I examine the relationship between a firm's divestiture activities and the likelihood that the firm will become an acquisition target. Using a logit model comparing a sample of target firms matched with a sample of non-target firms from 1986 to 2010, we find that a firm is 27 percent more likely to be acquired within three years of a divestiture activity than if there was no previous divestiture, and the effect is stronger for firms with fewer numbers of segments. Our finding is robust to modifications of control variables, to managerial entrenchment, as well as to alternative diagnoses. Consistent with the literature, we find the market reacts positively to a divestiture announcement. However, cross-sectionally we find the market reaction is positively related to whether or not the divesting firm adopts a golden parachute feature and negatively on the firm's number of segments which is related to the probability of future acquisition. In the second essay titled "The Choice of Divestiture and Long-run Performance: Asset Sell-off versus Equity Carve-out," I examine the post-divestiture long-run performance of two different choices of corporate divestiture, asset sell-offs versus equity carve-outs, and find that the choice of divestiture method has important implications for post-divestiture long-run performance. My findings show that the sell-off parents' long-run abnormal returns are significantly higher than those of the carve-out parents. I also find evidence that the long-term abnormal performance improves with a reduction in the diversification discount. The effect of the diversification discount is weaker for divesting parents with higher levels of R&D. My results further show that a firm's pre-divestiture number of segments and level of asymmetric information are positively related to the probability of an asset sell-off.

Made available in DSpace on 2010-04-20T21:00:02Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 4 Sebastian Arbeleche.pdf.jpg: 18559 bytes, checksum: 9896e50946c488c842d22c7b00fbebd5 (MD5) Sebastian Arbeleche.pdf.txt: 114868 bytes, checksum: 72378c6543b7688b7e5f5d678290ac91 (MD5) Sebastian Arbeleche.pdf: 727086 bytes, checksum: 52168b50a9d358b209c62df383370b90 (MD5) license.txt: 4886 bytes, checksum: 0e234dd3d7b4053a4b0187f8fc733d03 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008-12-03T00:00:00Z / Esta dissertação analisa o desempenho de longo prazo (36 meses após o evento)das fusões e aquisições em países latino-americanos. O estudo abrange um total de 429 eventos de fusão e aquisição anunciados entre os anos de 1994 a 2005, em sete países da América Latina (Brasil, México, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Colômbia e Venezuela), onde os mercados de capitais estão relativamente mais desenvolvidos. É utilizada uma abordagem em tempo calendário baseada no modelo de mercado CAPM, através do qual se calcula o alfa de Jensen, para estimar os retornos anormais de longo prazo. Há evidências claras de retornos anormais de longo prazo negativos e significativos para México e Argentina, enquanto para Chile observam-se retornos anormais de longo prazo positivos e significativos. Os demais países da região (Brasil, Peru, Colômbia e Venezuela) não apresentam retornos anormais de longo prazo significativamente diferentes de zero. Procura-se também analisar as amostras de eventos a partir de diferentes pontos de vista com o intuito de entender quais os possíveis determinantes do desempenho de longo prazo: forma de pagamento, atitude do comprador, transações locais versus internacionais, especialização versus diversificação, e ocorrência da transação dentro ou fora de uma onda de fusões e aquisições. Observam-se evidências de retornos anormais de longo prazo para as subamostras, mas não se registra um comportamento uniforme na amostra de países. / This dissertation analyzes the long-run performance (36 months post-event period) of Latin American mergers and acquisitions. This work covers a total of 429 merger & acquisition events announced during the period comprehended between the years 1994 and 2005, in 7 Latin American countries (Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela), where capital markets are relatively more developed. A CAPM based calendar-time approach is used to estimate Jensen’s α, a measure of long-run abnormal returns. On the one hand, Mexico and Argentina present hard evidence on the existence of significant negative abnormal returns. On the other hand, Chile shows evidence of significant positive long-run abnormal returns. There is no proof of abnormal performance for acquiring companies in the rest of the analyzed countries (Brazil, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela). The mergers and acquisitions sample is also studied from different points of view in order to establish possible long-run performance determinants, such as: mode of payment, deal attitude, country of transaction (cross-border or non-cross-border), type of activity (related or non-related) and timing relative to M&A wave (in-wave or out-of-wave). This sub-sample analysis offers some evidence on the existence of abnormal performance as well, but there is no unique results pattern through the sample of studied countries.

One of the main tenets of finance is diversification. Investors choose their portfolios so as to diversify away their idiosyncratic risk. In four essays included into this dissertation the implications of less than perfect diversification on investors’ performance and asset pricing are investigated. In Essay I we examine one particular instance in which diversification may play a role in a non-portfolio type of investment: the IPO. In an IPO, a set of potentially non-diversified investors – the existing shareholders – reduce their holdings of a company, listing the company and selling part of its shares. Our contribution is to show how portfolio diversification of controlling investors in private companies affects the IPO process. We demonstrate that companies sold by more diversified shareholders are less likely to be taken public, but when doing so they are priced more favourably. In Essays II and III we investigate the impact of incomplete diversification and imperfect risk-sharing on asset returns. Our argument is that the smaller shareholder base a firm has, the larger the fraction of company idiosyncratic risk on average its investors have to carry, and the higher return they would demand for that. We demonstrate that there is a negative and significant relationship between companies’ shareholder base and stock returns as well as between changes in shareholder base and stock returns. This effect is more pronounced for younger companies, but remains significant for seasoned companies as well. Applying our analysis to corporate events we demonstrate that abnormal performance following the repurchase can be partially explained by the reduction in the shareholders base resulting from repurchase. In Essay IV I investigate the motives behind one of the most puzzling examples of investors’ underdiversification – the local bias. Contrary to the predictions of classical financial theories, investors on aggregate overweight stock of proximate companies in their portfolios. I demonstrate that being placed in new community, individual investors not only soon become biased towards companies with establishments in this new locality, but they also obtain superior returns from these investments. Investing into the local stocks, therefore, is to a large degree rational. / Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2005 S. ii-vi: sammanfattning, s. 1-134: 4 uppsatser

利用1995-2015年間美國房地產投資信託基金（REIT）的176個初次公開發行為樣本，本研究分析了初步公開說明書（Form S-11）資訊與REITs上市後之當天，短期和長期表現之間的關係。其中，本文著重於探討四個特別領域的相關資訊，包括管理結構，承銷商聲譽，IPO閉鎖期及管理團隊品質。 實證結果顯示，初步公開說明書（Form S-11）包含有價值的資訊，有助於REIT IPO 投資人作投資評估之使用。其中，IPO閉鎖期大於等於產業標準180天的REITs，其在上市後6個月和12個月期間的報酬率高於IPO閉鎖期小於180天的REITs。此外，與過去的IPO研究結果相似，由知名承銷商所銷售之REIT IPOs 在初次公開發行後的短期及長期表現平均優於由知名度較低之承銷商所銷售的REIT IPOs。 然而，儘管過去與REIT相關的研究普遍偏好內部管理，本研究之實證結果支持外部管理的模式。其中，實證結果顯示外部管理的REITs在初次公開發行後的短期及長期表現平均優於內部管理的REITs。 / Using a sample of 176 US REIT IPOs from 1995 to 2015, this study examines the relationship between information provided on the preliminary IPO prospectus (form S-11) and post-IPO initial, short-term and long-term performance of REITs. In particular, this paper focuses on information related to four specific areas: management structure, underwriter reputation, lock-up period, and management quality. The findings of this study suggest that form S-11 carries valuable information, and is useful to investors in evaluating REIT IPOs. The regression results indicate that REIT IPOs with a lock-up period that is at least as long as the industry standard, on average, earn higher post-IPO returns 6-month and 12-month following the IPO date. Moreover, consistent with prior IPO studies, offerings underwritten by prestigious underwriters, on average, yield better post-IPO performance than IPOs underwritten by less reputable underwriters. Yet, unlike prior REIT studies, the findings of this paper tend to favor the external management structure. The results from the sub-sample imply externally managed REITs, on average, earn higher post-IPO short-term and long-term returns than their internally managed counterpart.