Analysing acquisitions made by Dual Class Companies

We examine the effects of dual-class structure on corporate acquisition activities; We also analyse the effect of the wedge between the cash-flow rights and control rights. By analysing a sample of 2233 corporate takeovers between 1995 and 2012 we find that in the short-run; the dual-class structure has a negative effect on the firms¿ abnormal returns whereas greater deviation between control rights and cash-flow rights within the dual-class sub-sample has an incremental effect on the abnormal returns. However, there is no evidence in favour of the hypothesis that in the long-run, managers use the dual-class structure to sanction unprofitable acquisitions as our long-term cross-sectional tests do not produce significant results. Our results are tested for self-selection issues and coefficients produced for mills ratios were not significant.