Shareholders wealth and mergers and acquisitions (M&AS)

We re-examine the abnormal returns (ARs) around merger announcements using a large sample of 8,945 announcements. We estimate the ARs using the Carhart (1997) fourfactor model under the standard ordinary least square (OLS) method and the Glosten et al.'s (1993) asymmetric GARCH specification (hereafter, GJR-GARCH). Under the OLS method, acquirers do not generate significant cumulative ARs (CARs) in line with prior work. Our new results, however, show that under the GJR-GARCH estimation, acquirers generate positive and significant cumulative CARs. We attribute the gains to the use of the GJR-GARCH estimation method, as the GJR-GARCH method is more effective in capturing conditional volatility and asymmetry in the excess returns.