Bidder Gains and Losses of Firms Involved in Many Acquisitions

We examine shareholders' wealth effects (both in the short‐ and the long‐run) of UK frequent bidders acquiring public, private, and/or subsidiary targets with alternative methods of payment between 1987 and 2004. We find that, in the short‐run, bidders break even when acquiring public targets and gain significantly when buying private and subsidiary targets. This result is robust after controlling for relative size, bidder's book‐to‐market ratio, target origin, and industry diversification. Our long‐run evidence, however, reveals that acquirers experience, significant wealth losses regardless of the target type acquired, indicating that markets may initially overreact to the acquisition announcement. As a result, we argue that contrary to Fuller et al. (2002) who suggest that acquiring private and subsidiary firms creates value for bidding firms, a reliable conclusion on bidders' shareholders wealth effects cannot be based solely on a short‐run event study.