UCLA

Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) play a central role in companies' strategies. This dissertation investigates how the location of merging companies and their competitors in the geographical, product market, or technological space influences key aspects of M&As, including the takeover price, the acquiring and the target companies' returns, the method of payment, and the spillover effects on the valuation of competitors. In particular, Chapter 1 studies how the geographical location of acquiring and target companies affects the competitiveness of the acquisition process and therefore the acquisition price. Chapter 2 investigates whether face-to-face interactions with the target's employees before an acquisition provide informational advantages to the acquirer and translate into higher acquisition returns. Chapter 3 looks at the perspective of the seller and studies how the geographical distance to the acquiring company affects the seller's incentives to retain partial ownership of the combined entity. Chapter 4 analyzes the market value spillovers of an acquisition announcement on competitors, and proposes a way to empirically disentangle the negative product market rivalry effect from a positive technological signaling effect.