Takeover Activity in Germany (Paperback)

Diploma Thesis from the year 2001 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 2,3, University of Frankfurt (Main) (Wirtschaftswissenschaften), course: Bankbetriebslehre, language: English, abstract: Inhaltsangabe: Abstract: I analyze the characteristics of premia in German takeovers of publicly listed corporations. I employ a unique data set of 167 transactions to examine the effects of toeholds, threshold crossings, means of payment, voluntary versus mandatory offers and premia cyclicity due to macroeconomic and financial variables. First, a descriptive analysis reveals that premia levels are substantially below levels in the Anglo-American markets. Cash constitutes the primary mode of payment and dominates equity offering. Also the trend of higher premia levels in a growing takeover market is observable. An investigation of transaction characteristics shows that premia and toehold size, stake size and offer period are significantly and negatively correlated. An investigation in threshold crosses reveals significantly higher median premia if a threshold-cross was observable. Second, constructed market-, market-adjusted and mean-adjusted models virtually demonstrate the same results. Third, Jensen-Alpha demonstrates that target stocks are low beta targets implying that they are generally defensive. Rising alpha coefficients parallel an increase in bid premia and are substantially higher for cash than equity offers, voluntary are superior to mandatory offers and bids involving toeholds dominate average premia. Fourth, regressions of premia on firm characteristics, but only the price to cash flow ratio regression reveals statistical significance. Fifth, the degree to which aggregate cyclical fluctuations have accounted for shifts in merger premia are measured and macroeconomic and financial variables that have the highest impacts on premia levels are identified modeling ARIMA-processes. Changes in interest and stock prices ar