This thesis consists of four essays or chapters that investigate acquisitions made by UK firms. The main focus of the research is the acquirers’ abnormal returns that are associated with the announcement of domestic and cross-border acquisitions. The research provides empirical evidence on some of the significant issues that have been raised in the literature, particularly focusing on measuring operating performance for domestic and cross-border acquisitions over the long-term. The first essay investigates acquirers’ announcement abnormal returns for acquisitions that have been conducted by UK firms, either domestically or internationally. The principal finding is that acquisitions of domestic firms appear to generate larger returns, whereas acquisitions classified as cross-border do not appear to add value to the acquiring firm. The second essay examines the characteristics of the deal, and how these impact the acquirers’ returns for both domestic and cross-border acquisitions. The characteristics considered are the method of payment, the industrial relationship between the acquirer and the target, the relative size of the acquirer to the target, the type of the target firm and the Book-to-Market ratio of the acquiring firm. The third essay investigates the directors’ overconfidence and its impact on the acquirers’ returns. Directors’ overconfidence is examined depending on the self-attribution bias by distinguishing between the abnormal returns to frequent and infrequent acquirers. The fourth essay examines insider trading via studying the relationship between the private investment decisions of the directors and the firm’s investment in respect of acquisitions it makes over the announcement date of the acquisition. Two different methods are proposed to classify directors into optimistic and neutral based on these personal portfolio trades. The fifth empirical chapter focuses on domestic and cross-border acquisitions with public targets, and studies their synergy gains and operating performance for a 3-year period after the announcement year. The aim is to try to understand what these firms gain from such acquisitions, given the apparent absence of a gain in value at the announcement of the investment. It is essential to add that the importance of this thesis comes from shedding a light on the role of acquisition activity in UK market within last 10 years domestically and internationally. Furthermore, providing a significant advice to firms not to allocate their capital in acquisitions with public targets because there is not benefit from investing in these types of investment.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:535951 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Adel, Nour |
| Contributors | Mase, B. |
| Publisher | Brunel University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://bura.brunel.ac.uk/handle/2438/5298 |
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