Ahmad Ismail

Further Analysis of Mergers and Shareholder Wealth Effects in European Banking

Although bank mergers have been a topic of ongoing research in the USA, particularly in view of reforms instituted by the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994, the evidence on shareholder wealth effects in European bank mergers is thin. A key question is whether the changes in the banking industry are applicable worldwide or reflect segmentation at the regional level. In this paper results are provided from a larger and more recent sample than previous studies. In contrast to previous findings, findings here are more consistent with those of US bank mergers, leading to the conclusion that there is less geographical heterogeneity in the industry than previous studies indicated. In particular, low target abnormal returns are found, which, it is believed, stem from the fact that acquirers are not willing to pay high premiums in a competitive environment in which profitability levels are eroding. It was found that abnormal returns are higher in bank-to-bank rather than cross-product deals, suggesting that there is still scope for exploiting economies of scale and market power within the banking sector. The evidence in relation to cross-border deals compared to national deals is mixed, giving some weak evidence in favour of the view that there are gains to geographical diversification.

Is economic value added more associated with stock return than accounting earnings? The UK evidence

Purpose – The paper seeks to examine the claim of EVA® advocates of its superiority as a financial metric compared with other measures. Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses a sample of 2,252 firm-year observations from the UK market and applies panel data regressions to test the relative information content of EVA and other accounting measures and the incremental information content of EVA components in explaining stock return. Findings – It is found that net operating profit after tax and net income outperform EVA and residual income in explaining stock return; it was also found that accruals and operating cash flow have significant incremental information content, while the accounting adjustments of EVA proponents have significantly less contribution in explaining stock return. Yet the paper concludes that other variables must be considered in order to capture the unexplained variation in stock return models. Research limitations/implications – Future research should include US and UK data in the same sample and examine whether the conclusions are maintained. Originality/value – For a set of cross-sectional time series data, ordinary least square (OLS) regressions produce biased results and inaccurate estimates of the parameters coefficients; however, this paper applies panel data regressions.

Operating performance of European bank mergers

With very few exceptions the accepted viewpoint established by (predominantly) US research is that bank operating performance is not improved after merger. In this article we concentrate on European banks and investigate post-merger operating performance for 35 publicly listed bank mergers that were completed between 1992 and 1997. We find that industry-adjusted mean cash flow return did not significantly change after merger but stayed positive. We also find that the merger led to a significant decrease in profitability and capitalisation. Our key finding, in contrast to the US evidence, is that cost-efficiency ratios improved, although the improvement was not large enough to offset the profitability decrease. We also find that low profitability levels, conservative credit policies and good cost-efficiency status before merger are the main determinants of industry-adjusted cash flow returns and provide the source for improving these returns after merger.

Acquirer's return and the choice of acquisition targets: does acquisition experience matter?

We study a sample of 6503 UK acquisitions completed between 1985 and 2004 and control for previous deals similarities. Returns for frequent acquirers decrease constantly but they remain positive through high-order deals. We do not detect an improving pattern of returns but, at best, a stable one when the deal is settled for cash. Using ‘characteristics-based’ experience variables, our multivariate analysis shows that the acquirers’ returns are unaffected by prior acquisition experience. However, we find solid evidence for acquirers drawing inferences from prior experience in designing the method of payment, selecting the organizational form of the target firm and engaging in focused acquisitions, which is consistent with learning through acquisitions. The results are robust to various consistency checks.