Stock Payment Acquirer's Pre-Acquisition Earnings Management and Its Post-Acquisition Performance

Abstract

For an M&A context, this paper investigates stock payment acquirers' trade-off strategy between accruals-based earnings management (AM) and real earnings management (REM) and it impacts on firm's post-acquisition performance during the period before and the period after the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). We find that stock payment acquirers, in addition to using pre-acquisition AM, are likely to use REM. Additionally, “mixed-stock” acquirers (stock payments greater than 50% but less than 100%) show more significant AM behaviors than the stock-for-stock acquirers, as shown in the literature, possibly because the disclosure of this strategy involves the latter firms but not for the former. This paper first illuminates “mixed-stock” acquirers’ earnings management (EM) strategy. We also find substitution effects between EM methods and that the choice of EM is closely related to an M&A's payment method, the SOX and whether the acquirer made the acquisition(s) shortly before the SOX. Results of the performance analysis suggest that the SOX has negatively impacts the long-term post-acquisition performance and that mixed-stock acquirers and 100% stock-for-stock firms have similar negative post-acquisition performance and market reactions. Furthermore, we discover mixed effects of EM behaviors on post-acquisition performance. The global picture suggests that, for the most part, the financial market cannot effectively perceive a firm's pre-acquisition EM, and it reacts in a unified optimistic way to stock payment deals in the short term. In the long term, it associates a firm’s future growth to its current performance and that pre-acquisition management no longer matters, though pre-acquisition AM users show better performance.