Journal article
Industry Expertise, Information Leakage and the Choice of M&A Advisors
X Chang, C Shekhar, LHK Tam, J Yao
Journal of Business Finance and Accounting | Published : 2016
DOI: 10.1111/jbfa.12165
Abstract
This paper examines the impacts of M&A advisors' industry expertise on firms' choice of advisors in mergers and acquisitions. We show that an investment bank's expertise in merger parties' industries increases its likelihood of being chosen as an advisor, especially when the acquisition is more complex, and when a firm in M&A has less information about the merger counterparty. However, due to the concerns about information leakage to industry rivals through M&A advisors, acquirers are reluctant to share advisors with rival firms in the same industry, and they are more likely to switch to new advisors if their former advisors have advisory relationship with their industry rivals. In addition,..
View full abstractGrants
Awarded by National Natural Science Foundation of China
Funding Acknowledgements
The first author is from Cambridge Judge Business School of the University of Cambridge, and Nanyang Business School of Nanyang Technological University. He is also a distinguished visiting professor at Jilin University of Finance and Economics and Central University of Finance and Economics. The second author is from the Department of Finance, Faculty of Economics and Commerce, University of Melbourne, Australia. The third author is from the Department of Finance and Business Economics, Faculty of Business Administration, University of Macau, Macau. The fourth author is at Wang Yanan Institute for Studies in Economics and School of Economics, Xiamen University, China. The authors are grateful for the valuable comments and suggestions from an anonymous referee, the editor (Ronan G. Powell), Ying Fang, Lily Qiu, Cong Wang and George Wong. They also thank participants at the Asian FA 2011, SFM Conference 2011, Australasian Finance and Banking Conference 2011 and seminar participants at the Monash University for helpful comments. They also thank Yuanfang Chu for excellent research assistance. Chang acknowledges financial support from Rega Capital Management Limited and Academic Research Fund Tier 1 provided by the Singapore Ministry of Education. Shekhar acknowledges funding provided under the Faculty Research Grant scheme of the Faculty of Economics and Commerce, the University of Melbourne. Tam acknowledges research funding (MYRG074(Y1-L2)-FBA11-THK) provided by University of Macau. Yao acknowledges research funding supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (#20720151145) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (#71502152). All remaining errors are the responsibility of the authors. (Paper received February 2015, revised version accepted October 2015)