I analyze the effect of auditor choice on acquirers’ values around merger announcements and the factors affecting the interaction between auditor size and the market reaction to merger announcements. I find that acquirers audited by non-Big 4 accounting firms outperform those audited by Big 4 firms. This effect is more pronounced when the targets are privately held and when the likelihood of the auditors playing a prominent advisory role increases. While the largest auditing firms are usually assumed to offer superior services, the study suggests that smaller firms have a comparative advantage in assisting their clients in merger transactions.

I examine the market's efficiency in processing manipulated accounting reports and provide an explanation for the post-merger underperformance anomaly. I find strong evidence suggesting that acquiring firms overstate their earnings in the quarter preceding a stock swap announcement. I also find evidence of a reversal of the stock price effects of the earnings management in the days leading to the merger announcement. However, the pre-merger reversal is only partial. I find evidence of a post-merger reversal of the stock price effects of the pre-merger earnings management. The results suggest that the extant evidence of post-merger underperformance by acquiring firms is partly attributable to the reversal of the price effects of earnings management. The study also suggests that the post-merger reversal is not fully anticipated by financial analysts in the month immediately following the merger announcement. However, consistent with suggestions in the financial press that managers guide analysts’ forecasts to “beatable” levels, the effect of the earnings management reversal seems to be reflected in the consensus analysts’ forecasts by the time of the subsequent quarterly earnings releases.

The study presents an economic analysis of the foreign translation adjustment and empirically examines the association between change in firm value and the foreign translation adjustment for a sample of manufacturing firms. The study shows that, for firms in the manufacturing sector, the translation adjustment is associated with a loss of value instead of an increase in value. This result stems from the fact that, for firms in the manufacturing sector, the accounting rules governing foreign currency translations generally produce results opposite to the economic effects of exchange rate changes.

Prior studies suggest that managers use their reporting discretion to signal private information. However, because managers are often assumed to use their discretion to mislead investors, discretionary accruals might be regarded as opportunistic. We posit that combining the accrual signal with other signals may be an effective means of communicating private information. One such signal is stock splits. The stock split signal lends credibility to the accrual signal whereas the accrual signal reinforces the split signal. Accordingly, we find that, at the split announcement, the market construes the pre-split abnormal accrual as a signal of managerial optimism rather than managerial opportunism.

Signaling is the most commonly cited explanation for stock repurchases in the academic literature. Yet, there is little evidence on whether managers intentionally use repurchases as signaling devices. Using a firm's financial reporting behavior to infer managerial intent, we find evidence suggesting that managers intentionally use fixed-price repurchase tender offers to signal undervaluation. In contrast, we find no evidence that managers use Dutch-auction tender offers to signal undervaluation. Instead, firms engaging in Dutch-auction repurchases act as if they are trying to deflate their earnings prior to the repurchases to further reduce the repurchasing price.

We examine acquiring managers' opportunistic reporting behavior around stock‐for‐stock acquisitions. Using the timing of merger announcements and completions to infer managerial intent, we show that acquirers with the most inflated earnings tend to announce mergers on Fridays, and that they manage earnings several quarters before the merger announcement date. Friday announcers exhibit a stronger negative association between pre‐merger announcement abnormal accruals and post‐merger announcement market performance than non‐Friday announcers. This effect is driven mainly by mergers that are completed relatively quickly after they are announced. Overall, the evidence supports the notion that some acquiring managers inflate earnings prior to announcing the mergers, and time the merger announcements to exploit investor inattention.

We provide evidence that the documented weakening of the accrual–cash flow association results not from a loss of accrual accounting usefulness per se, but from the deviation from accrual accounting as it relates to intangible investments. More specifically, the weakening of the negative association is driven by the combined effects of (1) increasing intangible investments, (2) the practice of expensing rather than capitalizing intangible investments, and (3) scaling accruals and cash flows by book value of assets, which are understated for intangible‐intensive firms. Treating intangible expenditures as capitalized investments and scaling accruals and cash flows by market value of equity, which reflects the value of intangible investments, (1) substantially strengthens the negative association between accruals and cash flows and (2) practically eliminates the apparent weakening trend in the association.

We find that bidders are more likely to hold conference calls at merger announcements when the mergers are financed with stock and when the transactions are large. After controlling for endogeneity, we also find that conference calls are associated with more favorable market reactions to merger announcements. A content analysis of merger-related information releases for a limited subsample indicates that the more favorable reaction is related to the fact that, compared to press releases, conference calls provide a greater volume of information and place greater emphasis on forward-looking details. We find no evidence that the superior announcement returns associated with conference calls subsequently reverse or that conference calls are positively associated with pre-merger announcement abnormal accruals. Overall, the results suggest that managers use conference calls around merger announcements to credibly convey favorable private information to the market.