The Intangibles Song in Takeover Announcements: Good Tempo, Hollow Tune

The Intangibles Song in Takeover Announcements: Good Tempo, Hollow Tune

Zoran M. Filipovic, Alexander Wagner

Series number :

Serial Number: 
599/2019

Date posted :

March 13 2019

Last revised :

March 12 2019
SSRN Share

Keywords

  • Corporate announcements • 
  • intangible assets • 
  • intangibles talk • 
  • mergers and acquisitions • 
  • takeovers • 
  • Textual Analysis

Mergers and acquisitions are often motivated by the intention of creating value from intangible assets. We develop a novel word list of intangibles and apply it to takeover announcements. Deals presented with more “intangibles talk” complete more quickly.

However, the value of these deals to the acquirer is questionable: One standard deviation more in intangibles talk results in 0.45 percentage points lower abnormal announcement returns of bidders. Agency problems explain little of these results. Instead, payment mode choices and insider trades suggest that intangibles talk reflects managerial overoptimism. Overall, takeover announcements can provide important information regarding the quality of deals.
 

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Authors

Real name:
Zoran M. Filipovic