Corporate Takeover Targets

Introduction to Part 2

After presenting a literature review on the process of takeover and the legal framework and economic weight, justifications and theoretical referents that explain their occurrence, performance and efficiency, as well as the reasons that can trigger them, Part 2 is devoted to the empirical studies applied to the European market, in order to highlight the particularities of European takeover targets.

This part primarily aims to conduct an exploratory study, using a questionnaire to survey specialists in M&A, which aims to detect other predictors of a takeover bid, and whose integration could improve the predictive ability of acquisition probability models. The next step is to analyze the economic and financial characteristics of European takeover targets in order to highlight the implicit motivations of acquirers; and eventually develop a standard and powerful takeover target prediction model. We propose test variables that have not yet been taken into account by previous empirical studies: one variable to measure the creation of shareholder value by targets and the second one to measure the growth options available to them.

The organization of Part 2 is as follows: in Chapter 3, the exploratory study is presented in two sections. The first section presents the conceptual and empirical framework of the exploratory study while the second section provides the results of the empirical tests. The fourth chapter presents another empirical study and is further ...