Empirical analysis of the trend in mergers and acquisitions of Russian holding companies

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the Russian market of mergers and acquisitions (the largest market for corporate control in Central and Eastern Europe) in 2003–2012 in terms of the total volume and value of the merger and acquisition deals of the holding companies. This analysis allowed for the conclusion that, to assess and forecast the integration activity of holding companies, the most precise and appropriate models are seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average models built on weighted observations to eliminate the effect of the structural changes which are characteristic of developing economies. Forecasting the values of development of the market for corporate control may serve as “input” information to form a prompt regulation system for the mergers and acquisitions of holding companies, which meets current needs. The presented analysis makes it possible to work out measures of public policy to increase the efficiency of the integration activity of holding companies.