The Effect of Acquisition Announcements on Stock Returns of Acquiring Firms
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of an International Master in Finance from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics and a Professional Master in Finance from the Fundação Getulio Vargas – São Paulo School of Economics THE EFFECT OF ACQUISITION ANNOUNCEMENTS ON STOCK RETURNS OF ACQUIRING FIRMS: A SHORT- AND LONG-TERM STUDY FOR DEVELOPED AND EMERGING COUNTRIES FOCUSING ON DOMESTIC AND CROSS-BORDER ACQUISITIONS AND THE IMPACT OF INSTITUTIONAL ENVIRONMENT Florian Otto NOVA SBE Student numbers: 3363 & 29365 FGV-EESP Student number: 338939 A Project carried out on the Double Degree EESP-FGV, under supervision of: Professor Rafael Zambrana (NOVA SBE, Lisbon, Portugal) Professor Joelson Sampaio (EESP-FGV, São Paulo, Brazil) Date: 10th September 2017 Abstract This paper uses an empirical event-study approach to investigate the effect of acquisition announcements on the share price of bidding firms. By using a globalised set of acquirers from 14 different markets, this work aims to develop an understanding of the impact of acquisition announcements on developed- and emerging-market acquirers. The sample contains 624 acquisition announcements with target firms located throughout the world between 1997 and 2015. The results contradict the conventional wisdom that developed-market acquirers generally experience losses. Both emerging-market and developed-market bidders gain significantly in the short term. Moreover, for developed-market acquirers, the announcement of cross-border acquisitions (CBAs) yields higher abnormal returns than the announcement of domestic acquisitions. On the other hand, emerging-market bidders gain from announcing domestic acquisitions, and lose substantially when publishing news about CBAs. In addition, the institutional environment is found to have an impact on acquirer returns. Keywords: Acquisitions, Abnormal Returns, Cross-border Acquisitions, Institutional Environment 2 Table of Contents 1. Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 4 2. Literature Review and Developed Hypothesis ........................................................................... 6 2.1 Acquirer Returns in Developed and Emerging Countries .................................................... 6 2.2 Acquirer Returns in Domestic and Cross-Border Acquisitions ........................................... 9 2.3 Institutional Environment and the Impact on Acquirer Returns in CBAs .......................... 10 3. Data Collection and Summary Statistics .................................................................................. 11 4. Methodology ............................................................................................................................ 13 4.1 One-Factor Market Model .................................................................................................. 17 4.2 Aggregated Cumulative Abnormal Returns ....................................................................... 19 4.3 Aggregated Buy-and-hold Abnormal Returns.................................................................... 19 4.4 Significance Tests .............................................................................................................. 20 5. Empirical Results ..................................................................................................................... 23 5.1 Empirical Results of the Aggregate Sample ....................................................................... 23 5.1.1 Aggregate Sample Short-term Event Study ....................................................... 23 5.1.2 Aggregate Sample Long-term Event Study ........................................................ 25 5.2 Empirical Results of Individual Countries ......................................................................... 27 5.2.1 Individual Countries Short-term Event Study .................................................... 27 5.2.2 Individual Countries Long-term Event Study .................................................... 29 5.3 Domestic and Cross-border Acquisitions Results .............................................................. 33 5.3.1 Domestic and Cross-border Acquisitions Short-term Event Study .................... 33 5.3.2 Domestic and Cross-border Acquisitions Long-term Event Study .................... 36 5.4 Impact of Institutional Environment Results ...................................................................... 39 5.4.1 Impact of Institutional Environment on Short-term Event Study ...................... 39 5.4.2 Impact of Institutional Environment Long-term Event Study ............................ 41 6. Limitations ............................................................................................................................... 43 7. Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 44 References ............................................................................................................................................. 46 Appendix ............................................................................................................................................... 49 3 1. Introduction Different kinds of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are present in all industries and across all countries and continents. In fact, M&A activities have always been an integral part of the inorganic growth strategies of corporates throughout the world. A record year for the number of worldwide M&A transactions was marked in 2016, when more than 48,000 deals were announced, with a corresponding total deal value of above US$3.5 trillion.1 Most of the deals are small and mid-size in value and only a fraction of the total deals are considered to be mega- deals, i.e. M&A transactions with a value higher than US$1billion.2 Not only has the number of M&A transactions increased in recent decades, but public and institutional interests, as well as numerous services supporting and consulting parties engaged in M&As, have become an integral part of this kind of deal-making. Moreover, the impacts of these events on numerous variables have been discussed in academic research, as well as in professional information technology circles all over the world. The focus of this research has been primarily on North American and European markets. Past studies have demonstrated that, in most cases, announcements of acquisitions tend to destroy value for shareholders of acquiring firms – in both short- and long-term perspectives.3 While public deals of listed companies create a considerable amount of publicity and press coverage, acquirers are likely not to meet the public’s high expectations and fall short in generating shareholder value or synergies. This paper contributes to the existing literature and research by analysing the stock returns of acquiring firms at the time of acquisition announcements not only in developed markets, but also in emerging markets and a frontier market, as noted by the Morgan Stanley Capital 1 https://imaa-institute.org/mergers-and-acquisitions-statistics/ 2 https://imaa-institute.org/m-and-a-statistics-transaction-type/ 3 Elaborated on in the following articles by Betton et al. (2008), Moeller et al. (2005), Mueller (1997) 4 International (MSCI) market classification.4 The paper identifies the top acquisitions by value in 14 different markets, and compares the security performance of acquiring firms in the short term, i.e. around the announcement date, as well as in the long term – up to 18 months after the official announcement. The following countries were selected to form part of the study: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, South Korea, and the United States. The research focuses on the aggregate sample and on each individual country, while also analysing the impact of domestic and cross-border acquisitions (CBAs), and the impact of the institutional environment in the target country on shareholder value creation. The results indicate show that both developed-market and emerging-market bidders benefit from announcing acquisitions in the short term. Moreover, when developed-market acquirers announce cross-border acquisitions, higher abnormal returns are reported than when announcing domestic acquisitions. For emerging-market bidders the effect is reversed. With regard to the impact of the institutional environment in the target country, this paper finds that when announcing CBAs in less developed countries, in terms of institutional environment, bidders benefit substantially. The rest of this paper is organised as follows. Chapter 2 examines the relevant literature and its various findings on the topics being investigated. Thereafter, the method of data collection is explained and highlights relating to important data summary statistics are provided. Chapter 4 elaborates on the empirical methodology approach. In the following chapter, empirical results and comments on the contribution to existing literature are presented. Chapter 6 deals with possible limitations of the study. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of this study and possibilities for further research. 4 https://www.msci.com/market-classification/ 5 2. Literature Review and Developed Hypothesis The effect of acquisition announcements on the stock prices of acquiring firms