Can Analysts Analyze Mergers?

Hassan Tehranian (), Mengxing Zhao () and Julie L. Zhu ()
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Hassan Tehranian: Finance Department, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts 02467
Mengxing Zhao: Alberta School of Business, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2R6, Canada
Julie L. Zhu: Accounting Department, Boston University School of Management, Boston, Massachusetts 02215; and Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 200030 Shanghai, China

Management Science, 2014, vol. 60, issue 4, 959-979

Abstract: After the completion of a merger and acquisition (M&A) transaction, the target firm is delisted, but some analysts who covered it retain coverage of the merged firm. We hypothesize that this decision is based on two factors: the analyst's ability to cover the merged firm and his or her assessment of the M&A deal. Consistent with these hypotheses, we find that the remaining target analysts provide more accurate earnings forecasts and more optimistic stock recommendations and growth forecasts for the merged firms than do the remaining acquirer analysts. We also find that a higher percentage of target analysts choosing to cover the merged firm is associated with better operating and long-term stock performance of that firm, but we do not find this relation with acquirer analysts. Our results extend the literature by showing that target analysts' coverage decisions reveal valuable information about a merged firm's future performance. This paper was accepted by Wei Jiang, finance.

Keywords: merger and acquisition; analyst coverage; forecast accuracy; merger performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

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