The Impact Of Adjustment In Capital Structure In Mergers & Acquisitions On Us Acquirers Business Performance

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of adjustment in capital structure on 850 US acquirers business performance, within five years after mergers. We consider both leverage changes and adjustment in leverage deficit as our independent variables, and use Return On Equity (ROE) and Return On Assets (ROA) to measure post-merger performance. We find that leverage changes have a negative impact on performance, in both the short and long run after Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A), indicating that financial flexibility contributes to acquirers post-merger performance. The results also show that acquirers with movement toward target leverage ratio enjoy better performance after M&A, but the correlation is not significant in the long run. Therefore, high financial flexibility created by low leverage is more essential to acquirers facing costly and sophisticated post-merger integration, than target leverage ratio that minimizes financing cost immediately.