The Worst of Both Worlds: Megamergers are Anticompetitive and Inefficient
51 Pages Posted: 15 Jul 2019 Last revised: 4 Sep 2019
Date Written: July 13, 2019
Abstract
There is no consensus in the literature regarding the financial consequences of megamergers in part due to the difficulty in establishing a good counterfactual. By comparing the performance of these deals to the performance of synthetic mergers constructed using a novel matching procedure, we find no significant changes in return on assets after megamergers. This apparent non-result is driven by merged firms subsidizing their increased operating inefficiencies with higher markups. We show that this cross-subsidization effect is stronger in larger deals and in more concentrated industries, suggesting that our findings are driven by market power and quiet life considerations.
Keywords: Mergers and Acquistions; Megamergers; Merger Gains
JEL Classification: C51; G34
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation