The preferred method for negotiating joint value-added activities, such as e.g. licensing, co-venturing or supply chain expansion, is cooperative bargaining, where agents act rationally and have perfect information, i.e., information sharing occurs. In such settings, however, stronger partner often insist on keeping their valuable information private and thus cooperative bargaining cannot occur due to the lack of information sharing. Though, non-cooperative bargaining is usually assumed to be inefficient. Based on a game-theoretic real options model, we develop a contractual solution that allows the proposer to keep its valuable information private while at the same time motivates the other partner to act in a timely and efficient manner, that is, to be Pareto-efficient.

This paper builds on recent advances in the domain of dynamic M&A option games under uncertainty and looks closer at the determinants that drive the strategic choice between mergers and tender offers. In particular, our model sheds new light in understanding the effects of uncertainty and relative size of firms on the choice of the M&A strategy. We not only show that uncertainty and relative size do impact the choice of the strategy, but we also show that the impact of uncertainty is non-monotonic. In fact, tender offers are more likely in a context of relatively low/high volatility. For intermediate uncertainty values mergers become more likely. Furthermore, the smaller/weaker the target relative to the bidder the more likely are tender offers. Additionally, our model also shows that the tender offer payoff is larger than the merger payoff, suggesting that larger combined CARs should be observed for tender offers. Our empirical study gives support to these results.