Mergers and acquisitions(M&A) is the most important strategy of the external growth for both the survival of firms and the increasing of firm value. As a result of M&A activity, acquiring firms want to get operational and financial benefit. It is argued that the major motives of M&A are related to obtain operating synergy, financial synergy, hubris, self-interest and so on.
Recently, many M&A activities have been executed in liner shipping market. Since 1993, there have been several M&A activities in liner shipping market. This study examines the impact of M&A on the stock price utilizing the data on acquiring firms in liner shipping market. The study covers the period from 1993 to 2009 and uses 61 daily closing prices of 36 acquiring firms surrounding the M&A announcement. The returns of acquiring firms are estimated through the market-adjusted model.
Using the market-adjusted model, we calculated abnormal returns(AR) and cumulative average abnormal returns(CAR) for 60 days before and after the announcement of M&A. AR showed the value between -1% and 1% and CAR is increased steadily from 30 days prior to announcement to 24 days after announcement and then it is decreased slightly. Our research results implies that the value of acquiring firm is increased slightly through M&A, but it does not show the statistical significance.
In addition, this study investigates AR difference between estimate window and post-event window, 3 cases of period -30 days and 30 days, -15 days and 15 days, -7 days and 7 days centered on the announcement date, for analysing the impact of M&A on the increasing of acquiring firm's value. The comparison results of each cases of estimate window and post-event window present slight increase of acquiring firm's value. But the results do not show the statistical significance.
These results suggest that M&A activity between liner shipping companies is utilized from the viewpoint of the long-term business strategy rather than increasing firm's value in the short-term.