Is stock liquidity transferred and upgraded in acquisitions? Evidence from liquidity synergies in US freeze-outs

Konstantinos Konstantaras and Vasilios Sogiakas

Annals of Operations Research, 2019, vol. 282, issue 1, No 9, 179-216

Abstract: Abstract This paper investigates the value successful bidders generate from acquiring less liquid targets. This synergy is traced with both theoretical and empirical evidence from the squeeze-out stage of going private transactions, when bidders hold sizeable toeholds in target shares. By transferring their superior liquidity, acquirers can add value to the valuation of their toeholds in fully acquired target assets. We use a sample of US delisted targets from globally listed acquirers over 25 years, and, in line with our theoretical analysis, a nonlinear relation is evidenced between the expected added value from liquidity transfer and illiquidity differences. The adjustment of target market prices for the attached option to participate in the bid in a new stochastic volatility framework reveals that the bulk of deal-generated wealth depends on the offered option. Although the market penalizes the mean acquirer with negative abnormal returns, those with higher liquidity differences from their targets are suffering less because of their greater potential of liquidity transfer synergy. The analysis of the probability that the offered option gets in the money reveals that liquidity transfer acts as a catalyst for successfully concluding the deal and underlies underbidding.

Keywords: Liquidity; Going private; Squeeze out; Freeze out (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10479-018-2870-7 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:annopr:v:282:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1007_s10479-018-2870-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/10479

DOI: 10.1007/s10479-018-2870-7

Access Statistics for this article

Annals of Operations Research is currently edited by Endre Boros

More articles in Annals of Operations Research from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().