 Stock merger activity and industry performanceBo Meng and Anand M. Vijh Journal of Banking & Finance, 2021, vol. 129, issue C Abstract: We propose a merger activity variable (MAV) as an alternative to industry merger waves. Unlike discrete merger waves that separate periods of extreme activity from the rest, our continuous MAV utilizes information in the full range of stock merger activity. We rank Fama-French 12 industries by MAV each quarter and arrange them into 12 bucket portfolios. We examine their prior and subsequent three-year excess returns using calendar-time portfolio method. The prior returns are positively related to MAV ranks while the subsequent returns are negatively related to MAV ranks. This evidence suggests a build-up of misvaluation (undervaluation of relatively less stock merger active industries and overvaluation of relatively more active industries) followed by a correction. On average, the most active industry outperforms the least active industry by 13.46% during the prior period, but underperforms by 10.30% during the subsequent period. Industry operating performance results further support the industry misvaluation theory of stock merger activity. Keywords: Mergers; Acquisitions; Merger Waves; Industry Performance; Long-Term Returns (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbfina:v:129:y:2021:i:c:s0378426621001199 DOI: 10.1016/j.jbankfin.2021.106160 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Banking & Finance is currently edited by Ike Mathur More articles in Journal of Banking & Finance from Elsevier |
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