Large Wealth Creation in Mergers and Acquisitions

We examine completed M&A deals with large bidder shareholder dollar wealth gains at announcement. Our results show that large-gain acquisitions are (i) typically “bolt-on” deals that are small relative to the acquirer’s size; (ii) transaction-specific events (not firmor CEOspecific events); (iii) enhanced by synergies from a strategic fit in the supply chain; and; (iv) executed by bidders with high valuation multiples. Many of these findings, which differ from those in the existing literature, provide important insight into the factors associated with considerable wealth creation for acquirer shareholders in M&A deals.