Challenging the payment effect in bank-financed takeovers

In the context of bank-financed takeovers, I examine the influence of loans and their characteristics on the success of acquisitions. The unique setting of matched syndicated loans allows me to forego the regular assumption in academic literature of cash payment being equal to debt financing. Consequently, I am able to distinguish between the payment effect and the financing effect of an acquisition. My three main findings are: (i) Payment method is just an estimator of the debt proportion in takeovers. Although percentage of cash has significant explanatory power to account for the sources of financing, variation still remains. (ii) Controlling for the real financial structure renders the payment method insignificant. Hence, the well-known outperformance of cash payment around the announcement of a takeover might actually just be an outperformance of debt-financed takeovers. (iii) Bank-financed acquisitions are associated, on average, with positive abnormal returns for acquirers’ stockholders. Higher bank involvements—approximated by greater deal leverage, higher loan costs, longer maturity, lower interest coverage, or no previous banking relationship—are signals for a more successful takeover. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015