Large Mergers Research Articles

Leading transformations – a holistic approach to leadership development

So, what was Woodside’s challenge? How does an organisation lead through a business transformation, an industry transformation and a global energy transformation simultaneously? And what was Woodside’s answer? To redefine a whole of business approach to leadership and uplift leadership capabilities. The first step was to create a framework to revolutionise the concept of leadership and uplift leadership capability. Woodside wanted every employee to identify as a leader and lead, no matter what their role. In 2021, Woodside partnered and co-created a leadership development program with the Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM) at UNSW. The program was designed for employees to uplift their leadership capability while empowering Woodsiders to be more deliberate in developing themselves and the organisation into the future. The commitment to date has seen thousands of employees undertake residential immersions and other learning experiences. Leadership and inclusive leadership capability have been uplifted and the framework has been leveraged as Woodside has successfully transformed operating models and completed a large merger. What was originally a stick drawing drafted on a napkin between two Woodside colleagues is now a conclusive framework known as Navigator. Since its inception in 2021 more than 2600 employees across all five countries have attended a Navigator immersion and more than 2500 Apply Learning experiences have been completed globally. Navigator has expanded its global reach across Woodside’s operations in Australia, China, the USA, Trinidad, and most recently in Dakar, Senegal.

Boosting employee morale through effective personnel management of selected banking and insurance firms in Nigeria

The ISA 2007 should also be changed to include notice of trade unions or their representatives in the case of large mergers, just as in the case of intermediate mergers, since legislation is a continuous process. This will help to preserve the goodwill of interested workers, who are the backbone of any organization during a merger or personnel management process. Regulatory bodies must guarantee that enough shareholders are kept informed and unsurprised throughout the merger and personnel management proceedings to avoid these business dealings becoming monopolistic. Based on this discovery, the research concluded that most Nigerian financial institutions were involved in very few strategic integration initiatives, particularly vertical integration. It is consequently recommended that Nigerian insurance and financial institutions improve the level of customisation offered to their clients to retain current clients and draw in new ones.

The foreign practice of large merger & acquisitions transactions in the stock market sector of the oil and gas industry

Subject. This article analyzes 12 major M&A deals in the stock market sector of the oil and gas industry in 2000–2019. Industry indicators are measured on the basis of data from ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Occidental Petroleum, Devon Energy, Anadarko Petroleum, EOG Resources, Apache, Marathon Oil, Imperial Oil, Suncor Energy, Husky Energy, Canadian Natural Resources, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, TOTAL, Eni, Equinor (Statoil), PetroChina, Sinopec, CNOOC, Petrobras, PJSC Gazprom, PJSC NK Rosneft and PJSC LUKOIL. Objectives. The article aims to examine the terms of M&A deals in the oil and gas stock market sector, as well as analyze the change and determine the current level of premium for control over equity capital in relation to market capitalization, and evaluate the consequences of concluded deals for the market capitalization of companies. Methods. For the study, I used the methods of comparative, financial and economic analyses, summarizing financial reporting data. Results. The article finds that market capitalization is the main benchmark for mergers and acquisitions in the stock market sector of the oil and gas industry, but the difference between the market valuation of assets and liabilities can also be used. An increase in the level of premium for capital control is noted in the industry, which exceeded half of the market capitalization. Thus, the least acceptable combination of conditions for entering into agreements is the totality of factors, such as high oil prices, commensurate capitalization of companies, cash compensation for equity capital and a high premium for control. On the contrary, transactions that took place during a period of low oil quotations with compensation in the form of shares had the most favorable effect on subsequent market capitalization. Conclusions and Relevance. It is necessary to pay close attention to the terms of mergers and acquisitions, in particular the control premium, as well as carefully calculate all the possible consequences of agreements concluded in the stock market sector of the oil and gas industry. The findings can help appraise the value of oil and gas assets as part of a comparative approach and decide on actions for raising the market capitalization of publicly traded oil and gas corporations.

MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS. A CREDIT RISK EVALUATION IN THE GREEK BANKING INDUSTRY SHORT- AND LONG-TERM TIME PERIOD AFTER THE EVENT

<p>The Greek banking system was greatly affected by the financial crisis that began to plague Greece in 2010. Therefore, in order to have competitive Greek banks, a rally of acquisitions and mergers of Greek banks began in 2010 and ended mainly in 2015. So, in essence, the Greek economy was left with only four large Greek systemic banks, which took over the other large and small distressed Greek banks under the specter of bankruptcy. This wave of acquisitions and mergers in the Greek banking system created strength in Greek banks mainly in terms of assets and at the same time protected the interests of Greek depositors. This paper deals with the assessment and calculation of the credit risk that led to the bankruptcy of the four Greek systemically important banks with Z-Score models. These banks are Piraeus Bank, National Bank, Eurobank, and Alpha Bank. The time period for conducting our study is limited from 2015 to 2020. The year 2015 is essentially the last year in which all the important and large mergers and acquisitions of Greek systemic banks that occurred immediately after the onset of the financial crisis in Greece in the year 2010, were completed. The last year of our study is the year 2020 when the pandemic started in Greece. In our paper, extensive reference is made to the credit risk models that we apply in our study, namely the Z-Score, the Z-Score for banks, and the Zeta model. The analysis of our findings is accompanied by tables, diagrams, and comments on them. The final comparative results obtained are forecasts for imminent possible or non-bankruptcy of the Greek systemic banks we examined. At the end of our paper, we present some conclusions about the Greek banking system and its future.</p><p><strong>JEL:</strong> G21, G33, G34</p><p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/soc/0021/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Evaluating public interest considerations in South African merger enforcement: an overview of the last decade

In literature, most studies on mergers focus purely on competition-related aspects; additional conditions that can apply are labelled non-competition goals or public interest considerations (PICs). The imposition of these conditions is garnering more attention from the competition authorities as a means to assist the struggling economy in South Africa. This paper reports the impact that various independent variables can have on the probability of certain public interest considerations being imposed on merger cases in South Africa with the use of a quantitative logit regression model. The study sample consists of 221 mergers between 2010 and 2019, and only includes cases with PICs as conditions to merge, based on all small, intermediate, and large mergers collected from Competition Commission and Tribunal newsletters, case files and company websites, as well as the Institute for Mergers, Acquisitions and Alliances. This research makes use of descriptive statistics and regression analysis from this unique database to analyse the data. The results indicate that for South Africa, the competition authorities focus on employment, supplier development fund programmes and Black economic empowerment conditions when considering which PIC to enforce on merger cases. The article contributes to the literature on competition policy and economics by adding to the minimal research already conducted and enhances our understanding of mergers with non-competition goals and the impact of these considerations in the South African merger framework.

Constraining the assembly time of the stellar haloes of nearby Milky Way-mass galaxies through AGB populations

ABSTRACT The star formation histories (SFHs) of galactic stellar haloes offer crucial insights into the merger history of the galaxy and the effects of those mergers on their hosts. Such measurements have revealed that while the Milky Way’s most important merger was 8–10 Gyr ago, M31’s largest merger was more recent, within the last few Gyr. Unfortunately, the required halo SFH measurements are extremely observationally expensive outside of the Local Group. Here, we use asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars brighter than the tip of the red giant branch (RGB) to constrain stellar halo SFHs. Both stellar population models and archival data sets show that the AGB/RGB ratio constrains the time before which 90 per cent of the stars formed, t90. We find AGB stars in the haloes of three highly inclined roughly Milky Way-mass galaxies with resolved star measurements from the Hubble Space Telescope; this population is most prominent in the stellar haloes of NGC 253 and NGC 891, suggesting that their stellar haloes contain stars born at relatively late times, with inferred t90 ∼ 6 ± 1.5 Gyr. This ratio also varies from region to region, tending towards higher values along the major axis and in tidal streams or shells. By combining our measurements with previous constraints, we find a tentative anticorrelation between halo age and stellar halo mass, a trend that exists in models of galaxy formation but has never been elucidated before, i.e. the largest stellar haloes of Milky Way-mass galaxies were assembled more recently.

Considerations for state-imposed conditions on healthcare provider transactions.

The widespread consolidation of health systems, hospitals, and physicians has contributed to the high price of healthcare across the United States. While federal antitrust enforcers continue to play an important role in overseeing large mergers, acquisitions, and other consolidating transactions of major healthcare providers, state oversight over healthcare markets is essential to slow consolidation more broadly and address market failures across the country. State laws govern the scope of authority held by state attorneys general and other state agencies to receive notice of, review, and approve, conditionally approve, or block healthcare provider transactions, which can significantly impact the breadth and content of oversight. While blocking potentially anticompetitive transactions can help states maintain any competitive forces that remain in the market, in some situations, approving a transaction with conditions may be the best path forward. Applying conditions to transactions may allow state officials to oversee and govern the behavior of providers post-transaction while states pursue other legislative fixes. Although the use of conditions is a relatively common practice at the state level, little research has been done to explore their use among states. Following a search in all 50 states, this paper examines decisions from state officials imposing conditions intended to address the impacts of transactions on healthcare price, access, and quality and provides recommendations for the effective use of conditions moving forward.

MERGER OF VODAFONE AND IDEA

The Vodafone-Idea merger, the largest merger in the history of the Indian telecom industry, was an attempt to address the growing dominance of Reliance Jio, which started offering free services, thereby gaining a significant market share. The primary aim of the merger was to instill confidence in the telecom companies during a price war. The merger of Vodafone and Idea had a significant impact on the telecom sector, surpassing Bharti Airtel to become the largest cellular service provider in some markets and the second-largest in others. This paper discusses the reasons behind the merger, the conditions of the merger and the impact of the merger on telecom industry. KEYWORDS: Vodafone, Idea, Merger, Reliance Jio, Telecom Industry.

Recent trends in interorganizational deal networks in pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.

While there have been trends in drug discovery from small molecules to new chemical modalities since the large mergers and acquisitions (M&A) of pharmaceutical companies in the late 2000s, trends in interorganizational deal networks have not been well addressed. We investigated the changing trends in interorganizational deals in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. The results demonstrated that there have been changing trends, including a growing number of spinouts from academia and M&A in the United States and Europe. These findings indicates that the traditional network in which large pharmaceutical companies drove drug discovery output has changed, and interorganizational deals among diverse players have become more active.

Sunlight is the Best Disinfectant: Real-Time Comment Letters and Large M&As in China

ABSTRACTThis paper investigates how communications between regulators and firms through comment letters affect the outcomes of large mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in China. Unlike the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which uses comment letters to improve the accuracy of the measurement of deals, Chinese regulators worry about controlling shareholders' self-dealing and use real-time comment letters to expose suspicious deal specifics and to create pressure for controlling shareholders to back down. I find that the Chinese stock exchanges issue more severe comment letters on deal filings that indicate controlling shareholders’ expropriation of minority shareholders. More severe comment letters are associated with a lower market response to the receipt of letters, predict a higher probability of voluntary deal cancellation by management, and indirectly increase the probability of deal withdrawal and lengthen the processing time for equity-funded deals by affecting the approving body’s scrutiny level.

Empirical analysis of risks’ influence on the large mergers and acquisitions projects’ success in modern companies

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are among the key strategies for stabilizing and strengthening a company's market position in an unstable economic environment and gaining a competitive advantage from inorganic growth. Doing so, big M&A deals show a higher risk of failing, being terminated, or being incomplete, which can lead to financial, reputational, and time losses. Due to these factors, prudent risk-management of such transactions is necessary, including the evaluation of the degree to which various risk groups influence M&A success. This paper evaluates big (those the value of which exceeds 10 billion euros) M&A projects risks influence on the success of the deal closure quantitatively and offers recommendations for managing significant risks using the project methodology. The analysis includes probit-regressions on a wide sample of 24 countries and 10 amalgamated industries. As a result, five risk groups appear significant: risk of transaction's hostile nature; cross-country risks; risk of misjudging the transaction value; risks associated with the size ratio of target and acquiring companies; risk of delaying the terms of the deal. Transnational mergers and acquisitions demonstrate a stronger influence of all significant risks on the transaction's success. The paper provides recommendations for managing significant risks using the project methodology.

Performance Analysis of Yili’s Acquisition of Ausnutria under the Background of ‘New Consumption’

As a well-known dairy company in China, Yili officially completed the acquisition of infant formula goat milk powder head company Ausnutria Dairy in 2022. This acquisition has become the largest merger in the dairy industry in recent years. This paper analyzes the motivation and integration process of Yili’s merger and acquisition of Ausnutria Dairy, and uses event research method and accounting research method to measure the market performance and financial performance of the merger and acquisition, and on this basis, the effect of the merger and acquisition is systematically evaluated. The study found that after the merger, the market responded positively, shareholder wealth increased, and mergers and acquisitions had a positive impact on profitability, growth ability and solvency in addition to a slight reduction in Yili’s operating capacity. Finally, the research puts forward the enlightenment of enterprise merger and acquisition, and provides experience for enterprise horizontal merger and acquisition.

Comparison of US Hospital Charity Care Policies Before vs After Onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Tax-exempt hospitals are required to provide charity care to maintain their tax-exempt status; charity care policies must be published online with clear eligibility criteria. Prior research has shown wide variability in charity care policy content; it is unknown how hospitals change their charity care policies over time. To examine changes to tax-exempt hospital charity care policies before vs after the COVID-19 pandemic. This cohort study used downloaded charity care policies from a geographically representative sample of 170 tax-exempt hospitals from December 1 to 31, 2019, and December 1 to 31, 2021, and categorized the policy changes made as more restrictive, more generous, indeterminate, minimal, or not updated. Onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The primary outcome was charity care policy content changes from 2019 to 2021. Also examined were the effects of hospital ownership type, state Medicaid expansion status, and hospital consolidation on policy changes. In this sample of 170 hospitals, 151 published documents available for comparison. Among these hospitals, 127 (84.1%) updated their charity care policies and 77 (51.0%) made substantial changes, with 242 distinct policy changes to categories such as income eligibility cutoffs, asset limitations, and service exclusions. Although the majority of hospitals expanded charity care (47 [31.1%]), a sizable minority restricted charity care (12 [7.9%]). Medicaid expansion during the study period and hospital consolidations were not associated with expansion of charity care; the largest merger in this sample led to reduced charity care at all 4 hospitals involved. Tax-exempt hospitals appear to have updated their policies with mostly positive changes during and after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic; however, some hospitals restricted charity care in 2021 documents. Unpublicized or vague eligibility criteria may limit patients' understanding of charity care policies and conceal the full extent of charity care policy changes over time. Policy makers should consider requiring greater transparency and simplification for hospital charity care policies to ensure adequate access to care for uninsured and underinsured patients.

Constraining changes in the merger history of BH and PBH binaries with the stochastic gravitational wave background

Black holes binaries coming from a distribution of primordial black holes might exhibit a large merger rate up to large redshifts. Using a phenomenological model for the merger rate, we show that changes in its slope, up to redshifts $z\sim 4$, are constrained by current limits on the amplitude of the stochastic gravitational wave background from LIGO/Virgo O3 run. This shows that the stochastic background constrains the merger rate for redshifts larger than the single event horizon of detection ($z\simeq 1$ for the same detector). Moreover, we show that for steep merger rates the shape of the stochastic gravitational wave signal at intermediate frequencies differs from the usual $2/3$ IR scaling. We discuss the implications of our model for future experiments in a wide range of frequencies, as the design LIGO/Virgo array, Einstein Telescope, LISA and PTA. Additionally, we show that i) the stochastic background and the present merger rate provide equally constraining bounds on the abundance of PBHs arising from a Gaussian distribution of inhomogeneities and ii) Degeneracies at the level of the stochastic background (i.e. different merger histories leading to a similar stochastic background) can be broken by considering the complementary direct observation of the merger rate from number counts by future detectors such as the Einstein Telescope.

Assets of the World's Leading Publicly Traded Oil and Gas Corporations

Subject. The article focuses on assets of twenty five leading public oil and gas companies from 2006 through 2018. Objectives. The study aims to trace key trends in assets of corporations in the oil and gas industry, identify main changes s within the studied period, establish factors that led to the transformation. Methods. I employ methods of comparative and financial-economic analysis, summarizing financial reporting data. Results. The paper determines changes in the value and structure of assets in the stock market sector of the industry and defines the main drivers of the transformation, based on the comprehensive analysis of balance sheets of twenty five oil and gas companies. The findings disclose an increase in the book value of assets in the majority of leading publicly traded oil and gas companies. Large mergers and acquisitions and agreements for new field development also contributed to the increase. I established that the protracted industry crisis resulted in reducing the proportion of current assets in order to release funds for revenue increase. That was why oil and gas companies sought to accelerate the collection of receivables, primarily by means of trade component. Furthermore, I revealed that they channeled a part of funds thus collected to short-term financial investments. Conclusions. The increase in the book value of assets in the stock market segment of the oil and gas industry is mainly due to the non-current component.

Private agendas and the public good: The contested development of high-speed passenger rail transport in the United States

During the 1960s, the United States Department of Commerce (and later the Department of Transportation) cooperated with the Pennsylvania Railroad (later, Penn Central) to develop the Metroliner, an American version of the Japanese Shinkansen. Federal officials possessed overtly political motives, including an effort to build political support for the Democratic Party in the heavily urbanized Northeast. Railroad executives sought federal subsidies for conventional rail passenger service, while building political support for the largest merger in American history. The conflicting agendas precluded the development of high-speed surface transportation in the United States.

The Origin and Evolution of Giant Radio Galaxies

Giant radio galaxies are arguably the least understood of jetted active galactic nuclei (AGN). We propose that radio galaxies are the product of large mergers that do not involve radio galaxies or radio quasars, such as in merging spiral galaxies, while giant radio galaxies emerge from a merger involving a parent that in the not-too-distant past harbored a radio galaxy. Predictions following from this are an upper limit to the number fraction of giant radio galaxies to radio galaxies, lower average redshift for giant radio galaxies, a higher incidence of high excitation for giant radio galaxies compared with radio galaxies, and lower average prograde black hole spin values for giant radio galaxies compared to radio galaxies and to bright radio quiet quasars.

Merger waves: Are buyers following the herd or responding to structural queues?

While there has been a significant amount of research covering the causes of merger waves, few papers have rank ordered merger waves based on the causes nor sought to determine which rationale leads to higher bidder payouts. This paper seeks to fill this gap by examining a cross section of large mergers across most industries occurring over a 17 year period. I find that merger waves over this period are caused foremost by changing economic and regulatory conditions. It is the behavioral rationale of mispricing, however, that more often leads to higher bidder payouts or merger premiums among acquirers in merger waves.

Data Analysis Environment to Study the Dynamics in Electronic Design Automation Industry

Abstract The Electronic Design Automation (EDA) industry is one of the most complex and dynamic industries. In the pressure of continuous technological turbulence, changing market demands, and industry convergence EDA companies find it difficult to adapt. This is one of the industries characterized by a large Merger and Acquisition activity. This paper presents results about EDA industry dynamics taken by a data analysis environment developed specifically to study the data for this industry and companies operating in this technological turbulent environment.

Consolidation on Aisle Five: Effects of Mergers in Consumer Packaged Goods

We study the effects of mergers in the consumer packaged goods industry, a sector that comprises approximately one-tenth of GDP in the United States. We match data on all recorded mergers between 2006 and 2017 with retail scanner data. In comparison to prior work, which focuses on case studies of large mergers, our approach allows us to estimate the effect of a typical merger. Most mergers we study are highly asymmetric (a large firm acquires a much smaller firm) and rarely challenged. By studying these mergers, we provide new evidence on the effects of mergers on prices, quantities, product availability, and exit. On average, mergers lead to a short-run price effect at the target of 1% and declines in total revenue of 7%. These average effects hide substantial heterogeneity across different groups of mergers. Our results highlight the importance of effects not captured in the canonical model, such as effects on consumer surplus through changes in product availability, and through inefficient firms' capital being repurposed by more productive acquirors.