This paper investigates whether the takeover market has been affected by heightened macroeconomic uncertainty, following President Trump’s Election, both in the US and globally. We have based our analysis on a four-year period around the 2016 US elections, and as such we have observed an increase in M&A deals and associated valuations, after the election; this was especially true for cross-border deals acquiring U.S. targets, consistent with a tariff-jumping hypothesis. The high target valuations are also the product of the implementation of a lower corporate tax rate, which reveals positive externalities for U.S. targets, stemming from the protectionist and lower corporate tax initiatives of the regime.

This paper investigates the effects of CEO’s social network on bank risk-taking. We document a positive relation between bank CEO’s social connections and bank risks. To address the endogeneity concerns, we use deaths and retirements within networks to perform a difference-in-difference analysis, and find robust results. We also report that well-connected bank CEOs take more risk when more of their social ties are linked to informationally opaque firms and when the labor market offers fewer employment options. In addition, diversity of social ties (professional and educational) helps to mitigate the impact on risk. Finally, this study reveals an inefficient trade-off between bank risk and return, suggesting that executive social networks lead to excessive bank risk.