Abstract: We examine the impacts of acquirers’ acquisition experience, corporate reputations, and corporate social responsibility on stock market reactions to acquisition announcements. We argue that under uncertain and complex conditions, intangible assets reveal vital information about the attributes and capabilities of a firm that consequently influence market expectations about the firm’s strategic initiatives. Using an event study of a sample of 296 acquisition announcements, we find that an acquirer's acquisition experience has a U-shaped relation with market responses to an acquisition. Results further show that an acquirer’s reputation and social performance both negatively impact stock market reactions. Finally, the analyses demonstrate that reputation magnifies the impact of acquisition experience on market responses to acquisition announcements.

Abstract: This event study of public takeover announcements focuses on acquisitions targeted at public IPO-firms from German Stock Markets. While empirical studies typically focus on firm patents as a predictor of take-over reactions, we further control for the patents owned by the CEO as the key inventor of the firm. The results confirm that while the stock market positively evaluates the takeover of high innovative firms, market participants are pessimistic about takeovers where the CEO and founder controls critical and indispensable intangible assets like firm specific human capital. We conclude that the acquirer’s post-acquisition performance depends on the continued access to the targets’ specific intangible assets, which is not necessarily the case for the founder’s specific human capital.

Abstract: Identification of M&A characteristics explaining the variance in the acquiring firm performance remains a major issue in strategy. In an attempt to address it, we consider the performance effects of the type of M&A (technological or non-technological) and the origin (cross-border or domestic). We find strong empirical support to our hypotheses that acquirers in technological M&A earn significantly higher returns on announcement than those in non-technological M&A both in domestic and cross-border deals, and that the difference increases in cross-border M&A. The results are robust to alternative abnormal return measures and competing explanations.

Abstract: Information disclosure by managers can be viewed as strategic behavior intended to influence the information receivers’ perception of the firm, because of which the medium of disclosure is a highly consequential choice. This study examines the moderating effect of rich media, such as conference calls or webcasts, on the relationship between deal attributes and market response to M&A announcements. I hypothesize that rich media use can exacerbate the negative market response to deals that possess value-destroying characteristics, such as high relative deal size. In other words, the strategic disclosure perspective suggests that deals that are likely to be greeted poorly by the market will do even worse when announced using rich media. The main theoretical insight is that rich media announcements run the risk of magnifying negative deal attributes and thus influence investor response. Data on M&A announcements made by S&P 500 companies from 2005 to 2011 supports the hypotheses.