Performance of Corporate Acquisitions over the Medium Term in Germany

Does the performance of target industrial firms whose shares have been taken over in their majority by another industrial firm come up to expectations? K. Randolf Scheller evaluates the excess stock returns not only during an announcement period, but over a longer term period of up to five years. The author rejects the shareholder-value-maximizing hypothesis over longer term periods in this kind of transactions because the results of his study show significant negative abnormal returns. With a narrow majority the acquiring firm is not able to exercise sufficient control over the management of the target firm and its business policies in order to improve the performance of its investment.