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Journal of Finance Vol. 62 No. 1 2007

Learning by Observing: Information Spillovers in the Execution and Valuation of Commercial Bank M&As

Gayle DeLong; Robert DeYoung1

1 Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation

Abstract

We offer a new explanation for why academic studies typically fail to find value creation in bank mergers. Our conjectures are predicated on the idea that, until recently, large bank acquisitions were a new phenomenon, with no best practices history to inform bank managers or market investors. We hypothesize that merging banks, and investors pricing bank mergers, learn by observing information that spills over from previous bank mergers. We find evidence consistent with these conjectures for 216 M&As of large, publicly traded U.S. commercial banks between 1987 and 1999. Our findings are consistent with semistrong stock market efficiency.

DOI
10.1111/j.1540-6261.2007.01205.x
Volume
62
Issue
1
Pages
181-216
Language
en
Sources
openalex bibtex:phds-export.bib crossref

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