Bank M&As in the U.S. and the EU: shareholder value creation through consolidation

Abstract

In this thesis, we focus on providing new evidence regarding the shareholder wealth effects on bank M&As. As Kaplan (2000) suggests, merging activity is influenced by industry and regulatory shocks. Therefore, the current economic condition provides a unique opportunity for examining potential changes in consolidation trends in the banking industry. On the one hand, the Dodd-Frank Act in the U.S. attempts to re-regulate the financial sector after the market collapse of 2008, and on the other hand, the long-lasting European sovereign debt crisis had revealed the weaknesses of the European banking industry. Therefore, both events are likely to have influenced they way market participants react to bank mergers and acquisitions. Another important issue is the limitation in samples of the existing relevant studies. All studies for the U.S. market focus exclusively in deals between publicly-traded banks, and find no evidence of merger-related bidder gains. Fuller et al., (2002), Officer et al. (2009), among others, examine deals between nonfinancial firms, and find positive bidder gains in private offers. Hence, we attempt to fill this gap and examine whether this “listing-effect” is also evident in the banking industry.