Subsequent Merger Research Articles

Electricity liberalisation in Britain: The quest for a satisfactory wholesale market design

Britain was the exemplar of electricity market reform, demonstrating the importance of ownership unbundling and workable competition in generation and supply. Privatisation created de facto duopolies that supported increasing price-cost margins and induced excessive (English) entry. Concentration was ended by trading horizontal for vertical integration in subsequent mergers. Competition arrived just as the Pool was replaced by New Electricity Trading Arrangements (NETA) intended to address its claimed shortcomings. NETA cost over £700 million, and had ambiguous market impacts. Prices fell dramatically as a result of (pre-NETA) competition, generating companies withdrew plant, causing fears about security of supply and a subsequent widening of price-cost margins.

The American College of Nurse-Midwives and its antecedents: A historic time line

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of the American College of Nurse-Midwives, this time line presents a chronologic history of the development of nurse-midwifery in the United States. It places the introduction of nurse-midwifery in American health care into its historic context and follows the evolution of the profession through early attempts at forming a national organization, the eventual formation of the American College of Nurse-Midwifery, and the subsequent merger with the American Association of Nurse-Midwives, to create the American College of Nurse-Midwives. The work of the College between 1955 and the turn of the 21st century is highlighted.

Probing General Relativity with Mergers of Supermassive and Intermediate‐Mass Black Holes

Recent observations and stellar dynamics simulations suggest that thousand solar mass black holes can form in compact massive young star clusters. Any such clusters in the bulge of their host galaxy will spiral to the center within a few hundred million years, where their intermediate-mass black holes are likely to merge eventually with the galaxy's supermassive black hole. If such mergers are common, then future space-based gravitational wave detectors such as the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna will detect them with such a high signal to noise ratio that towards the end of the inspiral the orbits will be visible in a simple power density spectrum, without the need for matched filtering. We discuss the astrophysics of the inspiral of clusters in the nuclear region of a galaxy and the subsequent merger of intermediate-mass with supermassive black holes. We also examine the prospects for understanding the spacetime geometry of rotating black holes, based on phase connection of the strong signals visible near the end of these extreme mass ratio inspirals.

The Evolution of Gravitationally Unstable Protoplanetary Disks: Fragmentation and Possible Giant Planet Formation

We carry out a large set of very high resolution, three-dimensional, smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations describing the evolution of gravitationally unstable gaseous protoplanetary disks. We consider a broad range of initial disk parameters. Disk masses out to 20 AU range from 0.075 to 0.125 M☉, roughly consistent with the high end of the mass distribution inferred for disks around T Tauri stars. Minimum outer temperatures range from 30 to 100 K, as expected from studies of the early protosolar nebula and suggested by the modeling of the spectra of protoplanetary disks. The mass of the central star is also varied, although it is usually assumed to be equal to that of the Sun. Overall, the initial disks span minimum Q-parameters between 0.8 and 2, with most models having Q ~ 1.4. The disks are evolved assuming either a locally isothermal equation of state or an adiabatic equation of state with varying γ. Heating by (artificial) viscosity and shocks is included when the adiabatic equation of state is used. When condensations above a specific density threshold appear as a result of gravitational instability in a locally isothermal calculation, the equation of state is switched to adiabatic to account for the increased optical depth. We show that when a disk has a minimum Q-parameter less than 1.4, strong trailing spiral instabilities, typically three- or four-armed modes, form and grow until fragmentation occurs along the arms after about 5 mean disk orbital times. The resulting clumps contract quickly to densities several orders of magnitude higher than the initial disk density, and the densest of them survive even under adiabatic conditions. These clumps are stable to tidal disruption and merge quickly, leaving two to three protoplanets on fairly eccentric orbits (the mean eccentricity being around 0.2) after ~103 yr. Fragmentation is not strongly dependent on whether the disk starts from a marginally unstable state or gradually achieves it; we show that if the disk is allowed to grow in mass from a very light, very stable state over tens of orbital times, it still fragments at roughly the same mass and temperature as in the standard disk models. We show that the first stages of the instability, until the appearance of the overdensities, can be understood in terms of the maximum unstable Toomre wavelength and the local Jeans length. A high mass and force resolution are needed to correctly resolve both scales and follow the fragmentation process appropriately. Varying disk mass and temperature affects such physical scales and hence the typical masses of the protoplanets that form. Objects smaller than Saturn or a couple of times bigger than Jupiter can both be produced by fragmentation. Their final masses will then depend on the subsequent interactions and mergers with other clumps and on the accretion of disk material. The accretion rate depends on the disk thermodynamics and is negligible with adiabatic conditions. After ~103 yr the masses range from just below 1MJup to more than 7MJup, well in agreement with those of detected extrasolar planets.

Early Formation and Late Merging of the Giant Galaxies

The most luminous galaxies in the present Universe are found at the centers of the most massive dark matter haloes, rich galaxy clusters. In the LCDM cosmology, such massive halo cores are present at redshift z=6 with a comoving number density (as a function of mass interior to ~10 kpc) that is comparable to today's value. The identity of the matter in these central regions is, however, predicted to change as major mergers bring together stars and dark matter from initially well separated sub-units. We use N-body simulations to investigate how these mergers push pre-existing matter outwards in the dominant galaxy while preserving the inner density profile of collisionless matter. It appears that the central regions of large galaxies end up dominated by stars formed in a number of dense cores, well before the last major mergers. The density profile of collisionless matter (stars and dark matter combined) in these central regions appears to be stable and to have attractor-like behavior under merging. This suggests that the baryon loading associated with dissipative contraction and star formation may be erased as subsequent mergers drive the mass distribution back to a universal profile. Such suppression of the effects of baryon loading, along with the early assembly of mass concentrations, may help resolve some apparent challenges to the CDM model for structure formation.

Will the Proposed Application of Basel II in the United States Encourage Increased Bank Merger Activity? Evidence from Past Merger Activity

This paper presents two tests of the hypothesis that adoption of the internal ratings-based approach to determining minimum capital requirements, as proposed in applying the Basel II capital accord in the United States, will cause adopting banking organizations to increase acquisition activity. The first test estimates the relationship between excess regulatory capital and subsequent merger activity, including organization and time fixed effects, while the second test employs a "difference in difference" analysis of the change in merger activity that occurred the last time regulatory capital standards were changed. Estimated coefficients and observed differences have signs consistent with the hypothesis, but results are either statistically insignificant or imply differences that are small in magnitude.

The Globular Cluster Systems of the Early-Type Galaxies NGC 3379, NGC 4406, and NGC 4594 and Implications for Galaxy Formation

We have investigated the global properties of the globular cluster (GC) systems of three early-type galaxies: the Virgo Cluster elliptical NGC 4406, the field elliptical NGC 3379, and the field S0 galaxy NGC 4594. These galaxies were observed as part of a wide-field CCD survey of the GC populations of a large sample of normal galaxies beyond the Local Group. Images obtained with the Mosaic detector on the Kitt Peak 4 m telescope provide radial coverage to at least 24', or ~70–100 kpc. We use BVR photometry and image classification to select GC candidates and thereby reduce contamination from non-GCs, as well as Hubble Space Telescope WFPC2 data to help quantify the contamination that remains. The GC systems of all three galaxies have color distributions with at least two peaks and show modest negative color gradients. The proportions of blue GCs range from 60% to 70% of the total populations. The GC specific frequency (SN) of NGC 4406 is 3.5 ± 0.5, ~20% lower than past estimates and nearly identical to SN for the other Virgo Cluster elliptical included in our survey, NGC 4472. SN for NGC 3379 and NGC 4594 are 1.2 ± 0.3 and 2.1 ± 0.3, respectively; these are similar to past values, but the errors have been reduced by a factor of 2–3. We compare our results for the early-type sample (including NGC 4472) to models for the formation of massive galaxies and their GC systems. Of the scenarios we consider, a hierarchical merging picture, in which metal-poor GCs form at high redshift in protogalactic building blocks and metal-rich GC populations are built up over time during subsequent gas-rich mergers, appears most consistent with the data.

Knowledge dynamics and the mergers of firms in the biotechnology based sectors

Firms are becoming increasingly knowledge intensive but we know very little about the ways in which they create and use knowledge. In this paper, we provide a representation of the knowledge base of a firm, defined as the collective knowledge that a firm can use to produce marketable outputs. Here the knowledge base (KB) of the firm will be mapped using patent statistics. In particular, we study the strategic reorientation and subsequent merger of Rhone Poulenc and of Hoechst. Starting from the EPO database, we select the patents of the two firms for the period 1990-1998. We study the changes taking place in the KBs of the two firms, both by patent statistics and by lexicographic analysis. The latter technique allows us to create a map representing the technological classes contained in the patents of the two firms and their links. In our representation, the KB takes the form of a network with technological classes as nodes and with links determined by the co-occurrence of given key words in different technological classes. The networks representing the KBs of the two firms change in the course of time following their strategic decisions. Our objective is to provide conceptual and operational definitions of the KBs of the firms and to analyse the role that the KBs play in the strategic reorientation of the two firms and in their subsequent merger. Central questions concern how the KBs of Hoechst and Rhone Poulenc changed as a consequence of their re-orientation towards the life sciences, and how the nature of the KBs of the two firms influenced the merger. Also, how did the KBs of the two firms change following the merger? What effect would the new KB have on the decision to separate (or not) the agrochemical and pharmaceutical divisions?

Consolidation and Strategic Positioning in Banking with Implications for Europe

THE UNPRECEDENTED RESTRUCTURING and consolidation that are occurring around the globe are probably best characterized as a financial services sector in flux. Transactions are particularly numerous and breathtaking in the United States and Western Europe, but restructuring is also occurring in Asia. Most striking is the escalating scale of mergers in banking. In just the last few years, in the United States mergers have led to a consolidation of money center banks (for example, the Chase Manhattan and Chemical Bank merger, prior to their subsequent merger with J. P. Morgan) and the emergence of regional powerhouses (for example, the expansion strategies of BankOne and Nationsbank and their mergers with, respectively, First Chicago/NBD and BankAmerica). In Europe mergers have also been prominent. Although cross-border mergers are relatively infrequent—with exceptions in Scandinavia and the acquisitions across the Dutch-Belgian border, 1 such as the acquisition of the Belgian Bank BBL by the Dutch financial conglomerate ING—domestic mergers typically involve large universal banks and are often spectacular. Noteworthy examples include the marriage of the Union [End Page 37] Bank of Switzerland with Swiss Bank Corporation and the acquisition of Paribas by Banque National de Paris. In Japan spectacular mega-mergers have put the Japanese banks among the largest banks in the world ranked by book value of assets.

The Antitrust Emperor's Clothes

Antitrust policy over the last 25 years can claim substantial achievements: the stated terms of the debate have shifted to consumer welfare and efficiency; the 1982 and subsequent Merger Guidelines and the Hart-Scott-Rodino review process provide safe havens, comparative predictability, and effective protection against suits filed after a deal is done; and large-firm monopolization cases have become less frequent, though the Microsoft case represents a notable exception. However, antitrust policy is still not founded on a solid empirical understanding of its effects in practice, and the bipartisan consensus under the Clinton and Bush administrations has allowed a partial return to the policies of the 1970s with benefits that are speculative at best.

Catalytica Energy Systems 2001: Financial highlights

This paper examines whether and how bidders' conservative tone in 10-K filings influences the subsequent mergers and acquisitions (M&A) investment decisions of these US firms from 1996 to 2013. Based on 39,260 firm-year observations, we find, consistent with behavioural consistency theory, that conservative bidders are less likely to engage in M&A deals. Further, those that decide to engage in M&As are likely to acquire public targets and within-industry firms. These bidders are inclined to employ more stock acquisitions than cash acquisitions. Our results also indicate that conservative bidders experience abnormally poor stock returns around the announcements of M&A investments. This provides new insights on the mechanism through which bidders' sentiments influence shareholders' wealth. Overall, these findings highlight the implications of the textual sentiment of corporate disclosure for the forecasting of corporate investment and financing decisions. Our results have practical implications, since they shed light on the value relevance of the information content of major Securities Exchange Commission (SEC)-mandated 10-K filings.

Comparing the inspiral of irrotational and corotational binary neutron stars

We model the adiabatic inspiral of relativistic binary neutron stars in a quasi-equilibrium (QE) approximation, and compute the gravitational wavetrain from the late phase of the inspiral. We compare corotational and irrotational sequences and find a significant difference in the inspiral rate, which is almost entirely caused by differences in the binding energy. We also compare our results with those of a point-mass post-Newtonian calculation. We illustrate how the late inspiral wavetrain computed with our QE numerical scheme can be matched to the subsequent plunge and merger waveform calculated with a fully relativistic hydrodynamics code.

Carrier Mexico S.A. de C.V.

The market for air conditioners is changing in Latin America. Consumers with greater purchasing power demand window units of differing sizes and capacities. These are being sold through new, mass distribution channels such as Sears and Wal-mart. This case involves the attempts of one manufacturer, Carrier, to respond to these changes by introducing a new “product delivery system” (PDS) that would enable the company plant to produce all models of window air conditioner each week. Carrier de Mexico, though a subsidiary of a U.S.-based multinational, is very much a Mexican company. It was founded with the purchase of a distributor in the northern city of Monterrey, and the subsequent merger with another Mexican company. Since that merger, there have been nine plant consolidations and a reduction from four factories to one. Manufacturing space was reduced by 32% while production increased by 38%. At the time of the proposed change to PDS, the company was still absorbing the changes of recent years that had been guided by a philosophy of kaizen or continuous improvement. As consultants, the company had hired a group of ex-Toyota employees who had developed their own version of kaizen, which was carried out through events in which radical change was produced. The new challenge facing the company was to supply the new mass merchandising channels with a full variety of window air conditioners, which was particularly difficult during the peak summer months. Company practice had been to produce long runs of each model, thus reducing set-up times but increasing inventories. The adoption of a weekly mixed-model delivery schedule would necessitate significant changes both within the company and in supplier relations. However, it is no longer a matter of whether Carrier de Mexico (CMX) would adopt PDS, which was being pushed both by Latin American Operations in Miami and Global Manufacturing at company headquarters. The decision facing the President of CMX, Roger Duarte, was how rapidly the PDS was to be implemented. Global Manufacturing had developed a detailed implementation schedule requiring 18 to 24 months, but this would have missed the peak summer sales period. Mr. Duarte was considering an accelerated 12-month program at CMX to have the RAC lines running under PDS by the summer of 1996. The case describes the air conditioner industry, Carrier background, and past change efforts, details the RAC production process, and focuses on the decision to accelerate PDS implementation. An accelerated program would take advantage of the growing demand for a broad variety in mass merchandise outlets, but it would entail some risk of failure. This trade-off between risk and reward is a central issue of the case.

Pathways to Corporate Convergence? Two Steps on the Road to Shareholder Capitalism in Germany: Deutsche Telekom and Daimler Chrysler

Perhaps the key question in the corporate convergence debate is the extent to which parties will settle on a shareholder capitalism model, in which managerial accountability will be measured against a public shareholder wealth maximization criterion. The paper evaluates two particular events for the impact on German corporate governance: the privatization of Deutsche Telekom and the cross-border merger between Daimler Benz and Chrysler Corp. The Deutsche Telekom transaction had symbolic impact, because it made many Germans shareholders for the first time, but the terms of the transaction substantially protected these shareholders against risk and deprived them of governance rights. The Daimler Chrysler merger, on the other hand, is a major event in governance convergence because it should inject a substantial element of US-style shareholder activism into the governance of a major German corporation. The paper identifies several elements, including: the change in the shareholder body through a dilution of traditional German holders and the addition of U.S. institutional investors, the pioneering of a template for subsequent cross-border mergers involving German firms, the flexibility of German corporate law to shareholder initiatives, and the likely rippling impact of governance changes at Daimler Chrysler on other major German corporations.

Short-Chain Alcohols Promote an Early Stage of Membrane Hemifusion

Hemifusion, the linkage of contacting lipid monolayers of two membranes before the opening of a fusion pore, is hypothesized to proceed through the formation of a stalk intermediate, a local and strongly bent connection between membranes. When the monolayers’ propensity to bend does not support the stalk (e.g., as it is when lysophosphatidylcholine is added), hemifusion is inhibited. In contrast, short-chain alcohols, reported to affect monolayer bending in a manner similar to that of lysophosphatidylcholine, were here found to promote hemifusion between fluorescently labeled liposomes and planar lipid bilayers. Single hemifusion events were detected by fluorescence microscopy. Methanol or ethanol (1.2–1.6 w/w %) added to the same compartment of the planar bilayer chamber as liposomes caused a 5–50 times increase in the number of hemifusion events. Alcohol-induced hemifusion was inhibited by lysophosphatidylcholine. Promotion of membrane hemifusion by short-chain alcohol was also observed for cell-cell fusion mediated by influenza virus hemagglutinin (HA). Alcohol promoted a fusion stage subsequent to the low pH-dependent activation of HA. We propose that binding of short-chain alcohol to the surface of membranes promotes hemifusion by facilitating the transient breakage of the continuity of each of the contacting monolayers, which is required for their subsequent merger in the stalk intermediate.

Compensatory lengthening and structure preservation revisited

In de Chene & Anderson's (1979) article on compensatory lengthening, the authors make two strong claims as to the universal nature of compensatory lengthening. These claims are: (i) that compensatory lengthening occurs in two stages, involving the weakening of a consonant to a glide and the subsequent merger of the resulting diphthong; and (ii) that compensatory lengthening can only occur when there is a pre-existing vowel-length contrast in the language in question.Both of these claims have received considerable attention in the literature. The first claim has never gained widespread acceptance, and has been challenged in several studies. Challenges have come from, for example, Hock (1986), Poser (1986), Sezer (1986) and more recently Gildea (1995). Each of these scholars provides a strong case against the view that compensatory lengthening is always decomposable into two distinct stages. The ensemble of their arguments renders this claim simply untenable.

Sequential horizontal mergers

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the interdependence of merger decisions over time. Using the Fudenberg–Tirole (American Economic Review 74 (1984), 361–368) taxonomy of business strategies, we provide a general discussion of merger decisions made in sequence by disjoint groups of firms. In a linear Cournot model, we retrieve all four business strategies of the general taxonomy by allowing for cost savings due to merger. We find that the prospects of a subsequent merger decision have an ambiguous effect on the profitability of the first merger. We also show, in our general framework, that, when merger decisions are interdependent over time, the condition of Farrell and Shapiro (American Economic Review 80 (1990), 107–126) overestimates a merger's actual external effect.

The role of cooling flows in galaxy formation

The present structure of galaxies is governed by the radiative dissipation of the gravitational and supernova energy injected during formation. A crucial aspect of this process is whether the gas cools as fast as it falls into the gravitational potential well. If it does then rapid normal star formation is assumed to ensue. If not, and the gas can still cool by the present time, then the situation resembles that of a cooling flow, such as commonly found in clusters of galaxies. The cooled matter is assumed to accumulate as very cold clouds and/or low mass stars, i.e. as baryonic dark matter. In this paper we investigate the likelihood of a cooling flow phase during the hierarchical formation of galaxies. We concentrate on the behaviour of the gas, using a highly simplified treatment of the evolution of the dark matter potential within which the gas evolves. We assume that normal star formation is limited by how much gas the associated supernovae can unbind and allow the gas profile to flatten as a consequence of supernova energy injection. We find that cooling flows are an important phase in the formation of most galaxies with total (dark plus luminous) masses approxgt 10^12 Msun , creating about 20 per cent of the total dark halo in a galaxy such as our own and a smaller but comparable fraction of an elliptical galaxy of similar mass. The onset of a cooling flow determines the upper mass limit for the formation of a visible spheroid from gas, setting a characteristic mass scale for normal galaxies. We argue that disk formation requires a cooling flow phase and that dissipation in the cooling flow phase is the most important factor in the survival of normal galaxies during subsequent hierarchical mergers.

Supernovae, Globular Clusters, and Galaxy Mergers

view Abstract Citations (23) References (58) Co-Reads Similar Papers Volume Content Graphics Metrics Export Citation NASA/ADS Supernovae, Globular Clusters, and Galaxy Mergers van den Bergh, Sidney Abstract A number of lines of evidence show that collisions, and subsequent mergers, of gas-rich disk galaxies can trigger bursts of star and cluster formation. Observations of NGC 4038/4039 (the Antennae) appear to show that the young clusters formed during this merger have an exponential (open cluster) luminosity function, rather than a Gaussian (globular cluster) luminosity function. This result militates against the suggestion that the high specific globular cluster frequency in elliptical galaxies is due to globular cluster formation during mergers. The observation that [α/Fe] is larger in ellipticals than it is in spirals shows that elliptical galaxies must have formed on a shorter timescale than spirals. This would appear to rule out evolutionary models in which the majority of ellipticals formed from mergers between mostly stellar disk systems. Scenarios in which the protogalactic halo was locally homogeneous, but globally heterogeneous and clumpy, may account for the puzzling observation that Galactic globular clusters exhibit both age differences of a few gigayears and high [α/Fe] values. Publication: The Astrophysical Journal Pub Date: September 1995 DOI: 10.1086/176115 Bibcode: 1995ApJ...450...27V Keywords: GALAXIES: ABUNDANCES; GALAXIES: EVOLUTION; GALAXIES: FORMATION; GALAXIES: INTERACTIONS; GALAXIES: STAR CLUSTERS; STARS: SUPERNOVAE: GENERAL full text sources ADS | data products SIMBAD (11) NED (3)

Evolution of galactic nuclei with 10-M black holes

A star with main-sequence mass greater than 25-30 M⊙ may collapse to a black hole of about 10 M⊙ at the final stage of the evolution. About an order of 1 per cent of stellar mass is likely to be in the form of such black holes in galaxies. The presence of even such a small number of 10-M⊙ black holes in a spherical stellar system mainly composed of low-mass main-sequence stars (i.e. M≲1 M⊙) can have significant effects on the dynamical evolution. We have examined the dynamics of two-component stellar systems composed of 0.7-M⊙ main-sequence stars, representing the old population of stars whose main-sequence lifetimes are longer than the Hubble time, and a small fraction of 10-M⊙ black holes. The dynamical friction leads to the segregation of black holes to the core, and the core collapse takes place among the black holes on a time-scale much shorter than that required for a single component cluster. Various physical processes occur as the density of the central cluster of black holes becomes higher: formation of binaries by three-body processes, heating by these binaries, gravitational radiation capture of black hole binary formation and subsequent merger, and tidal capture or disruption of stars by black holes. The ultimate evolution of the two-component stellar system depends on the role of three-body binaries formed among the black holes. In low-velocity-dispersion systems (i.e. ν≲100 km s-1, where v is the three-dimensional velocity dispersion), three-body binaries are eventually ejected from the stellar system after being hardened to a hardness of a few hundred. This picture has to be altered as the velocity dispersion changes. For a system with ν≳100 km s-1, binaries merge by gravitational radiation at some hardness instead of being ejected. The critical hardness, at which the collision time and the merger time become comparable, determines the efficiency of the binary as a heat source. The efficiency is found to be inversely proportional to the velocity dispersion. For clusters without a serious reduction in heating efficiency (i.e. velocity dispersion well below 500 km s-1), heating by three-body binaries has the effect of stopping the core-collapse. The cluster expands, but at a rate set by the half-mass relaxation time of the whole system, which is very long. Thus one obtains a nearly static two-component configuration: a central cluster of black holes surrounded by low-mass clusters. However, such a state would not last longer than the Hubble time if v≳50 km s-1, because most of the black holes would experience binary formation and subsequent mergers. Thus a seed black hole can easily form in the central parts of galaxies with even moderate initial conditions (i.e. νc≳100 km s-1).