published_or_final_version / abstract / Transport Policy and Planning / Master / Master of Arts in Transport Policy and Planning

I have lived through nineteen mergers and acquisitions and without moving companies, have signed eight employment contracts, all following M&As. Only two of the eight companies still trade, the others went bankrupt or shut down. My roles have been in engineering, sales, middle management and more recently a contributor at meetings where M&As were discussed and advisors attended. Despite professional advice, these M&As rarely turned out as planned including the envisaged growth and improvements. Often matters got worse, even for top executives. Yet, in both the literature and the way that people talk, businesses and individuals are portrayed as separate entities, M&As are aimed at changing only the businesses and are routinely associated with growth and improvements. My experience of M&As includes confusion about power and powerlessness, a sense of loss of valued relationships, identity issues and idealization of merged businesses. Using a narrative methodology and taking my experience seriously (Stacey and Griffin, 2005), I explore change and continuity through M&As and the experiencing of organizational upheavals. I also explore change in the idea of M&As and how we think of them. Drawing on complex responsive processes theory, I argue that we can enhance our understanding of change and continuity through M&As by exploring our experience of local interaction. Combined organizations as patterns of local interactions between people where these patterns emerge and evolve in the interplay of intentions, plans, actions and choices of all involved includes those between members of the merged organizations and between them and advisors, mediators, shareholders, competitors, customers, regulators and the media. To say that combined businesses emerge in this interplay is to understand change and continuity in terms of these evolving patterns of local interaction. These patterns include interpretations and conversations reflecting our ideologies, power relations, identities, idealizations and expectations about M&As. My expectations and reflections were influenced by and influence the discourse about M&As which I argue as social object evolves through our complex responsive processes of relating. Idealization of merged businesses, professional advice, the mainstream view of M&As as growth and improvement which amounts to ‘putting thought before action’ (Griffin, 2002: 25), all emerge and evolve through local interaction validating reflexive exploration of experience to enhance our understanding of change and continuity through M&As.

The significant impact of method of payment on the share price abnormal returns following mergers and acquisitions have been broadly considered and documented in US and UK empirical studies (Agrawal and Jaffe 2000). In the UK, all-cash acquisitions show insignificant negative or small positive abnormal returns, whilst the all-equity acquisitions have significant negative returns. Whilst it is tempting to conclude that it is simply the form of financing that separates the shareholder value destruction of equity-financed takeovers from cash takeovers, such a conclusion tends to ignore the question of where the cash to fund the acquisition comes from in the first place. Theory tells us this should matter. Whilst different theories on firm financing offer competing explanations on both managerial choices and shareholder preferences, it seems reasonable to ask the question whether the source of the cash influences the long run wealth effect of the acquisition. In order to shed light on this issue, this investigation looks at short-term daily abnormal returns as well as long-term abnormal returns including a five-year horizon of post-takeover returns and a three-year horizon of pre-takeover returns. The short-term daily abnormal returns support the signalling information hypothesis to some extent as acquirers financing takeovers using internal cash out-perform those financing takeovers by equity or debt issues. After categorizing the research sample firms into two sub-groups, one being internal funding while the other being external sources including equity or debt, the share price abnormal returns show statistically significant differences between these two sub-groups over 11-day event windows. Further, by using one- and two-dimensional analyses and a univariate test, the results reveal that UK cash acquisitions explored by this investigation contradict the free cash flow (FCF) hypothesis. Regression models show that book-to-market ratio is important in explaining the short-term daily abnormal returns. The long-term post-takeover stock performances show sensitivity to the benchmark adopted as well as the calculation used for the long-term abnormal returns, i.e. cumulated or compounded. Owing to the small sample firms entering the calendar time monthly portfolios, the calendar time approach employs White (1980) corrections and a GLS model to mitigate the effects of heteroskedasticity in the research sample. Generally speaking, long-term abnormal returns show a negative pattern for the whole sample as well as the sub-groups depending on their dominant financing methods. Furthermore, the univariate and multivariate tests demonstrate that the FCF hypothesis cannot explain the 60-month share price abnormal returns of the research sample. According to the coefficient derived from regression model(s), the most significant factor to predict 60-month abnormal returns is relative size (market value of target to that of bidder). The results suggest that the bigger the relative size of the target, the more negative the abnormal return will be (Hansen 1987, Martin 1996, Loughran and Vijh 1997). Besides, the institutional investors contribute a positive effect on long-term share price performance, which is consistent with the findings of Chen, Harford, and Li (2007). The pre-takeover share price abnormal returns over three years intervals prior to the bid announcements clearly show that cash acquirers overall experience a significant positive stock performance. This result is robust to adopting various benchmarks of event time and calendar time regression-based framework. Based on the dominant financing method used for the acquirers, firms issuing debt before the bid announcements do perform extremely well. Those firms subsequently perform badly for post-takeover long-term intervals. Accordingly, this phenomenon demonstrates a mean reversion picture. Regardless of whether an event time or a calendar time approach is used, high q firms always have higher abnormal returns even when allowing for other factors, such as free cash flow or cash stock. However, multinomial logistic tests fail to find any statistically significant link between pre- takeover abnormal returns and the form of financing.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Economics / Philip G. Gayle / My dissertation is comprised of two essays in the field of industrial organization with an emphasis on the airline industry. In particular, I investigate how airline mergers and alliances affect the components of total cost. By using a methodology that does not require the researcher to have cost data, I am able to infer marginal costs, fixed costs and sunk costs changes associated with mergers and alliances. My first essay examines two recent airline mergers—Delta/Northwest and United/Continental. Most post-merger analysis in airlines disproportionately focuses on assessing price rather than cost changes. Perhaps one reason is that reliable price data are more readily available. Despite the difficulty of obtaining cost data, researchers have sought to empirically assess whether cost efficiency gains associated with a merger outweigh the increased market power of the merged firm. The results from my analysis suggest that both mergers are associated with marginal and fixed costs savings, but higher market entry costs. The magnitude of the cost effects differed across the mergers. Moreover, I find that the market power effects of these mergers were negligible. My second essay investigates the cost effects of the codesharing alliance between Delta, Northwest and Continental Airlines. Codesharing is one of the most popular forms of airline cooperation that allows an airline to market and sell seats on its partners’ flights as though it owns those flights. Studies have found that airline alliances have very little to no effect on total cost. Rather than analyzing cost as a whole, I study whether a disaggregate analysis on cost is more appropriate. I find evidence that forming an alliance helps generate more passenger traffic for the alliance partners thereby reducing the partner carriers' marginal cost. Even though the literature has found that the total cost effects to be small, an alliance can have a considerable impact on some components of cost.

The purpose of this paper is to show how leadership and culture are critical factors in organizational change. The vehicle through which this point is proved is by analyzing the organizational change processes of mergers, as mergers involve leadership and culture. Successful mergers are very rare, and it is hypothesized that not enough attention is paid to leadership and culture during mergers. This paper analyzes many of the factors that related to leadership and culture, such as transparency, trust, communication, and vision. Not only does this paper analyze these topics, but it also examines and applies a successful change strategy, tailored for mergers.

In this doctoral dissertation is solved the relation between success in a field of mergers and acquisitions activities with connecting to existence of "agency costs" in stated companies. A domain of mergers and acquisitions is a very complex and dynamic section that includes not only economic relations connected with joinnig enterprises, but also accountancy and law environment, where mergers and acquisitions are realized.

In my work I will deal with mergers of companies in the Czech Republic in 2000-2008. I will concentrate on the share of foreign mergers and try to find out whether the year 2004, when the Czech Republic joined the EU, had an influence on the change of the number of foreign mergers. Then I will devide them according to the classification "OKEČ". In my analytical part I will use the date from the collection of statistics and decisions of "ÚOHS". I will describe the process of approving the mergers and the benefits that lead to business connections. I will mention the most important mergers, which have been realised in the Czech Republic in recent years.

Countries with high levels of growth-fostering business deregulation for domestic small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs) appear to attract more FDI inflows than countries with low levels of business deregulation. This may be because SMEs in such deregulated countries attract ample cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As), which are a major conduit of FDI inflows. This study therefore investigates the relationship between FDI inflow and business deregulation. The study employs a triangulation of quantitative research methodologies and a panel data of 154 countries to analyze the relationship between FDI and deregulation. Results from the study generally show that there are statistically significant and inversely proportional relationships between inbound FDI and the deregulation of: (i) starting a business, (ii) paying taxes, and (iii) export trading, by a country‘s domestic SMEs. The study also documents positive correlations between cross-border M&As and inbound FDI. Thus, countries are likely to attract more FDI inflows, especially through cross-border M&As, as they deregulate the: starting of businesses, payment of taxes and exportation of products for their domestic SMEs. Therefore, on policy front, it is recommended that in order to enhance FDI inflows, countries ought to deregulate these areas of infringement to efficient running of SMEs; this finding provides a complementary and/or substitute policy to the popular outward-looking incentive programs for attracting FDIs.

A presente pesquisa analisa o processo de acumulação, concentração e centralização de capital em três importantes setores da agroindústria, considerando a organização do espaço e sua atual inserção na economia brasileira. Para tanto, foram escolhidas algumas empresas representativas dos setores de carne bovina, óleo de soja e sucroalcooleiro, observando o movimento de fusões e aquisições no período 1992-2010. Nesse período, verificou-se um cenário econômico diferente das décadas anteriores no Brasil. Considerando o dinamismo e a multiplicidade das transações relacionadas a fusões e aquisições, procurou-se examinar as causas e desdobramentos dos processos de concentração e centralização de capital, igualmente a crescente oligopolização e desnacionalização relativas aos setores em estudo. Por fim, a identificação das ações das empresas envolvidas nos negócios, permitiu estabelecer analogias entre as estratégias de expansão geográfica e de diversificação nos setores, considerando a participação de capital estrangeiro e a internacionalização de empresas brasileiras. / The present research analyzes the process of accumulation, concentration and centralization of capital in three important sectors of the agriculture, considering the organization of the space and its current insertion in the Brazilian economy. For in such a way, some representative companies of the sectors of bovine meat, oil of soy and sugar cane had been chosen, observing the movement of merger and acquisitions in period 1992-2010. In this period, a different economic scene of the previous decades in Brazil was verified. Considering the dynamism and the multiplicity of the related transactions the merger and acquisitions, were looked to examine the causes and unfoldings of the concentration processes and centralization of capital, equally the increasing relative denationalization to the sectors in study. Finally, the identification of the actions of the involved companies in the businesses, allowed to establish analogies between the strategies of geographic expansion and diversification in the sectors, being considered the participation of foreign capital and the internationalization of Brazilian companies.

Esta pesquisa analisa o processo de concentração de capital, através de fusões e aquisições de empresas privadas e públicas no Brasil, nos anos 90, devido as políticas neoliberais adotadas pelos governos Collor de Mello e Fernando Henrique. Nos anos 90, os programas neoliberais difundidos na América Latina, foram delimitados pelo Consenso de Washington e formalizados nos acordos entre o FMI e o Banco Mundial com os governos latino americanos. As orientações visavam a estabilização das economias dos países emergentes, a contenção de gastos e investimentos Estatais, restrição do papel do Estado, com a privatização de empresas, bancos, recursos minerais e energéticos, etc. Assim, a abertura comercial e as reformas econômicas promovidas no Brasil, com aumento da participação dos investimentos externos deflagraram fusões e aquisições entre empresas nacionais (chamadas transações domésticas), e transações realizadas por empresas estrangeiras (denominadas cross border). A participação de empresas estrangeiras superou o volume de negócios entre empresas nacionais em quantidade, volume e valores, causando debates sobre a desnacionalização da economia brasileira. Esta pesquisa analisa a concentração de capitais no movimento de fusões e aquisições das empresas brasileiras, avaliando os setores mais afetados e a formação de oligopólios, e as circunstâncias em que ocorreram essas transações no território nacional. / This research analyzes the process of capital concentration, through merger and acquisitions of private companies and public in Brazil, in years 90, had the neoliberal politics adopted by the governments Collor de Mello and Fernando Henrique. In years 90, the spread out neoliberal programs in Latin America, they had been delimited by the Consensus of Washington and legalized in the agreements between the FMI and the World Bank with the Latin American governments. The instructions aimed at the stabilization of the economies of the \"emergent countries\", the State containment of expenses and investments, restriction of the paper of the State, with the privatization of companies, mineral and energy banks, resources, etc. Thus, the commercial opening and the promoted economic reforms in Brazil, with increase of the participation of the external investments motivate merger and acquisitions between national companies (called domestic transactions), and transactions carried through for foreign companies (called cross border). The participation of business-oriented foreign companies surpassed the volume between national companies in amount, volume and values, causing debates on the denationalization of the Brazilian economy. This research analyzes the concentration of capitals in the movement of merger and acquisitions of the Brazilian companies, evaluating the sectors more affected and the formation of oligopolies, and the circumstances where these transactions in the domestic territory had occurred.