Most mergers and acquisitions involve at least four parties with competing interests — acquiring firm shareholders, acquiring firm management, target firm shareholders, and target firm management. We consider the choice between hostile and friendly takeovers in this context and offer an explanation for the prevalence of friendly mergers between large acquirers and small targets. Negotiated merg...

Here we test the idea that new globular clusters (GCs) are formed in the same gaseous (“wet”) mergers or interactions that give rise to the young stellar populations seen in the central regions of many early-type galaxies. We compare mean GC colors with the age of the central galaxy starburst. The red GC subpopulation reveals remarkably constant mean colors independent of galaxy age. A scenario...

In an industry characterised by secret vertical contracts, we consider a benchmark case where two vertical chains exist, with two upstream manufacturers selling to two downstream retailers, and show that the equilibrium prices are independent of whether upstream or downstream ̄rms have all the bargaining power. We then analyse two alternative mergers, and show that a downstream merger (which gi...

So-called “horizontal mergers” of firms whose products are direct substitutes at the point of sale have garnered significant attention from researchers and regulators alike. We consider the effect of mergers between firms whose products are not viewed as direct substitutes for the same good or service, but are bundled by a common intermediary. Focusing on the case of hospital mergers across dis...

Overconfident CEOs over-estimate their ability to generate returns. Thus, on the margin, they undertake mergers that destroy value. They also perceive outside finance to be over-priced. We classify CEOs as overconfident when, despite their under-diversification, they hold options on company stock until expiration. We find that these CEOs are more acquisitive on average, particularly via diversi...

One of the fundamental questions astrophysicists attempt to answer is how galaxies evolve over time. A key process in this context is the gravitational attraction and eventual merging of two near-equal mass galaxies, a so-called major merger. Profoundly transformative events, major mergers substantially affect virtually all properties of a galaxy on a timescale of several hundred million years....

215 given k and n, one can choose any value of nz in the range from 2 to n to construct a multiway merging network. However, use of certain values of m results in less delay than others for the same value of n. One choice of the value of m is m = n. In this case, can achieve this time bound for the given value of n, are m = 2' with c < [log, n1. We have also assumed that there are n keys in eac...