Issue 36 Spring 2014

Beware of acquiring acquirer deals

A re public acquisitions bad for business? Evidence shows that when a public company acquires another public company it can suffer a significant shareholder wealth loss at the point when the deal is announced. It has never really been clear why this happens, leading us to ask the question – are public acquisitions bad for business? At Cranfield we have just completed a piece of research with colleagues from Oxford and Bristol University that shows that acquiring companies’ losses are largely as a result of whether or not the company being acquired was itself an acquirer (i.e. had previously acquired a number of other companies itself). An example of this is the Firstar Corporation (now the US Bancorp). The Milwaukee bank announced its takeover bid for the Mercantile Bancorporation on 30 April 1999. On the day it was announced the Firstar stock price plunged by 5%, while the market rose by 0.2%. How could Firstar’s shares have dropped so much in just one day and in such a mild market environment? A closer look at Mercantile Bancorporation reveals that they had in fact made over 20 acquisitions themselves in the previous four years. In other words, Firstar had acquired an acquirer. For our research we looked at over 4,000 sizable public mergers and acquisitions (between 1985 – 2010) in the U.S. We defined a company that has made one or more acquisitions during the preceding three-year period as ‘acquisitive’. By this definition, 27% of our sample were ‘acquiring- acquirer’ deals. We found that a company’s acquisitiveness is negatively related to the acquirer’s announcement stock returns. Announcement returns averaged -2.24% for deals with acquisitive targets, -0.51% for deals with non-acquisitive targets, and

-0.98% for the overall sample.

acquisitive firm before that firm grows larger and the company ends up being next on its shopping list. In other words, the company is defensive and it ‘eats in order not to be eaten’. Based on this theory, acquiring an acquirer is more likely to be motivated by the preservation of private benefits or control rather than to increase the value of the company. As a consequence, stock markets react negatively to the news. This is why this kind of acquisition has a negative impact on returns and why the more acquisitive the target firm, the lower the acquirer’s announcement returns. Our findings have a number of implications for the practice of mergers and acquisitions. For company executives considering making acquisition deals, you should clearly distinguish between acquisitive and non-acquisitive targets. It is clear from our research that stock markets do not welcome acquiring-acquirer deals. You should, therefore, think carefully if the target you are looking at is itself an acquirer. Company directors and shareholders need to approach acquiring-acquirer proposals with extreme caution and immediately question the motivations of managers behind the deal. Rather than assume that any growth is good, always beware of acquiring-acquirer deals. MF

The figures show that if you announce that you are going to acquire an acquirer, your company’s stock price will drop on average four times more than deals with non-acquisitive companies. From the sample period we looked at, six out of ten of the worst US acquisitions (based on stock returns) involved an ‘acquisitive’ target, in comparison to the top ten deals, none of which involved ‘acquisitive’ targets. We also found that there is a negative relationship between the number of past acquisitions made by the target and acquirer announcement returns. Announcement returns on average drop by -1.7% when the target has made one past acquisition; it drops to -3.4% when the target has made three past acquisitions; and drops markedly to -6.2% when the target has made five or more past acquisitions. So, the more acquisitive the target firm is, the larger the losses of the acquirer. Our findings are consistent with the ‘eat or be eaten’ theory of mergers and acquisitions, whereby a company reduces their chance of being acquired by acquiring another firm and hence increasing the size of their own firm. The basic idea is that a manager, concerned with the potential loss of control, decides to acquire the

“ Our findings are consistent with the ‘eat or be eaten’ theory. ”

BEWARE of acquiring acquirer deals by Huainan Zhao , Professor of Corporate Finance

Number of past acquisitions

0.00%

-1.00%

1

-2.00%

-1.7%

-3.00%

3

-3.4%

-4.00%

Acquirer returns -5.00%

5+

-6.00%

-6.2%

-7.00%

22 Management Focus

Management Focus 23