Hostile Takeovers (hostile + takeover)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN GERMAN CAPITAL MARKETS AND CORPORATE GOVERNANCE

JOURNAL OF APPLIED CORPORATE FINANCE, Issue 3 2001
Eric Nowak
Financial economists continue to point to Germany as a relatively successful model of a "bank-centered," as opposed to a market-based, economy. But few seem to recognize that, in the years leading up to World War I, German equity capital markets were among the most highly developed in the world. Although there are now only about 750 companies listed on German stock exchanges, in 1914 there were almost 1,200 (as compared to only about 600 stocks then listed on the New York Stock Exchange). Since German reunification in 1990, there have been signs of a possible restoration of the country's equity markets to something like their former prominence. The last 10 years have seen important legal and institutional developments that can be seen as preparing the way for larger and more active German equity markets, together with a more "shareholder-friendly" corporate governance system. In particular, the 1994 Securities Act, the Corporation Control and Transparency Act passed in 1998, and the just released Takeover Act and Fourth Financial Market Promotion Act all contain legal reforms that are essential conditions for well functioning equity markets. Such legal and regulatory changes have helped lay the groundwork for more visible and dramatic milestones, such as the Deutsche Telekom IPO in 1996, the opening of the Neuer Market in 1997, and, perhaps most important, the acquisition in 2000 of Mannesmann by Vodafone, the first successful hostile takeover of a German company. [source]


What Do Shareholders' Coalitions Really Want?

CORPORATE GOVERNANCE, Issue 2 2007
Evidence from Italian voting trusts
This paper studies the effects of having multiple large shareholders who share the control of firms, by analysing a unique dataset of Italian shareholders' agreements (voting trusts). We investigate the separation between ownership and control granted by such agreements, showing that, on average, a voting trust owning 52 per cent of the total company's cash-flow rights is able to exercise up to 87 per cent of the total board rights; the wedge is particularly beneficial to the largest shareholder within the voting trust who is able to get the majority of board rights despite owning only a minority fraction of the company's cash-flow rights. Then, an event-study analysis of a sample of voting trusts' announcements is performed. The results support the "entrenchment effects" hypothesis (Stulz, 1988) linking the ownership structure and the firm value, and are consistent with the view that, in Italy, voting trust agreements are mainly aimed at both protecting controlling shareholders from hostile takeovers and entrenching incumbent management. [source]


Shareholder Wealth Effects of European Domestic and Cross-border Takeover Bids

EUROPEAN FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, Issue 1 2004
Marc Goergen
G32; G34 Abstract This paper analyses the short-term wealth effects of large intra-European takeover bids. We find announcement effects of 9% for the target firms compared to a statistically significant announcement effect of only 0.7% for the bidders. The type of takeover bid has a large impact on the short-term wealth effects with hostile takeovers triggering substantially larger price reactions than friendly operations. When a UK firm is involved, the abnormal returns are higher than those of bids involving both a Continental European target and bidder. There is strong evidence that the means of payment in an offer has an impact on the share price. A high market-to-book ratio of the target leads to a higher bid premium, but triggers a negative price reaction for the bidding firm. We also investigate whether the predominant reason for takeovers is synergies, agency problems or managerial hubris. Our results suggest that synergies are the prime motivation for bids and that targets and bidders share the wealth gains. [source]


Private Equity, Corporate Governance, and the Reinvention of the Market for Corporate Control

JOURNAL OF APPLIED CORPORATE FINANCE, Issue 3 2008
Karen H. Wruck
In the early 1980s, during the first U.S. wave of debt-financed hostile takeovers and leveraged buyouts, finance professors Michael Jensen and Richard Ruback introduced the concept of the "market for corporate control" and defined it as "the market in which alternative management teams compete for the right to manage corporate resources." Since then, the dramatic expansion of the private equity market, and the resulting competition between corporate (or "strategic") and "financial" buyers for deals, have both reinforced and revealed the limitations of this old definition. This article explains how, over the past 25 years, the private equity market has helped reinvent the market for corporate control, particularly in the U.S. What's more, the author argues that the effects of private equity on the behavior of companies both public and private have been important enough to warrant a new definition of the market for corporate control,one that, as presented in this article, emphasizes corporate governance and the benefits of the competition for deals between private equity firms and public acquirers. Along with their more effective governance systems, top private equity firms have developed a distinctive approach to reorganizing companies for efficiency and value. The author's research on private equity, comprising over 20 years of interviews and case studies as well as large-sample analysis, has led her to identify four principles of reorganization that help explain the success of these buyout firms. Besides providing a source of competitive advantage to private equity firms, the management practices that derive from these four principles are now being adopted by many public companies. And, in the author's words, "private equity's most important and lasting contribution to the global economy may well be its effect on the world's public corporations,those companies that will continue to carry out the lion's share of the world's growth opportunities." [source]


The Role of Managerial Stock Option Programs in Governance: Evidence from REIT Stock Repurchases

REAL ESTATE ECONOMICS, Issue 1 2010
Chinmoy Ghosh
This article examines the role of stock option programs and executive holdings of stock options in real estate investment trust (REIT) governance. We study the issue by analyzing how the market reaction to a stock repurchase announcement varies as a function of the individual REIT's governance structure. In particular, we examine how executive and employee stock option holdings influence the market reaction to a firm's announcement of a stock repurchase. Using a sample of REIT repurchase announcements, we find that the market reacts more favorably to announcements by firms where executives have larger option holdings and the chief executive officer is not entrenched. Our results with respect to the roles of stock option holdings of executives and nonexecutives differ from those reported for a cross-section of non-REIT firms. While we find evidence supporting the importance of executive stock options in aligning the incentives of management and reinforcing the positive signaling associated with a repurchase announcement, we find little evidence that the market views REIT repurchases as being used primarily to fund option exercise. We attribute these findings to greater dependence by REIT investors on internal governance mechanisms (such as stock option programs) as a result of regulatory restrictions that limit external monitoring such as hostile takeovers. [source]


Are Friendly Acquisitions Too Bad for Shareholders and Managers?

BRITISH JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT, Issue S1 2006
Friendly Acquirers, Long-Term Value Creation, Top Management Turnover in Hostile
The well-documented failure of the majority of acquisitions to create value is often identified in popular discussion with hostile acquisitions, whereas friendly acquirers seem to get a friendly press. The relative performance of friendly and hostile acquirers therefore warrants a rigorous empirical investigation. Clear evidence of superior value creation in hostile over friendly acquisitions allows us to judge the efficacy of the market for corporate control. In this article we examine the long-term shareholder wealth performance of four types of acquirers , friendly bidder, hostile bidder, white knight and hostile bidder facing a white knight or another hostile bidder. For a sample of 519 acquisitions of UK target firms during 1983,1995, we estimated the three-year post-acquisition gains to acquirer shareholders and found that hostile acquirers deliver significantly higher shareholder value than friendly acquirers. We found that friendly acquirers with high stock-market ratings destroyed more value than hostile acquirers with a similar rating. Friendly acquirer top managers suffered greater job losses than those of hostile acquirers, perhaps paying the price for their inferior value-creation performance. Our study provides evidence of the superior value-creation performance of hostile acquirers and makes the case against takeover regulatory rules that may impede hostile takeovers. [source]