Mergers & Acquisitions and Behavioural Finance
I’ve not seen much discussion of the behavioural finance aspects of M&A, so it was refreshing to see this noted in a recent article in Q6, the publication in Fall 2009 of the Yale School of Management (full disclosure: I am a graduate of the charter class of that school).
In that article entitled ‘What is behavioral?’, Professor of Finance Nicholas Barberis notes that M&A is one of the prime examples of one of the three ‘areas of behavioural finance’: corporate finance, where he says ‘we’re trying to understand whether managers of firms do things that might be the result of less than fully rational thinking’. [The italicised emphasis is mine.] Mergers and acquisitions certainly are an excellent example of this, as they more often than not reduce shareholder (and other stakeholder) value, not increase it.
For your information, the other two areas of behavioural finance are related to asset pricing (that is, how stocks, houses and other assets are priced in the market) and investor behaviour (why people buy certain assets and not others). Notably, all three of these areas of behavioural finance defy the logic of rational decision-making, not just M&A deals.
But it is the M&A deals that to me are most interesting, of course. Why do managers insist on doing deals when the deals are not likely to be successful? There have been numerous studies looking at the drivers to these deals. One of my students at Cass Business School in a project for Mergermarket (the data providers and subsidiary of the FT Group / Pearson) has recently completed his dissertation looking at these drivers. In alphabetical order, these drivers are:
- Communication
- Culture
- Deal value
- Due diligence
- Financing of the deal (cash vs stock)
- Frequency of acquisitions / Previous acquisition experience
- Hubris of management
- Organisational fit
- Overpayment
- Size of the acquirer (relative to the target)
- Small vs large targets (absolute size of the target)
- Speed of integration
- Strategic fit
- Timing of the acquisition (whether taking place in a bull or bear market, for example)
- Type of acquisition (domestic vs cross border)
- Role of leadership
Not all of these are behaviourally related, of course, but you can see that most are and even those that appear not to be (such as deal value or timing) have strong aspects to those factors that will impact behaviours.
Determining which are the most important behavioural factors definitely requires more research. In my opinion, however, it would appear that (in agreement to many other observers) hubris and management ego / overconfidence is evident in just about every single deal — and no one will argue that this is a ‘behaviour’. But other areas of behavioural finance also come to play, including the basic human nature of remembering the positive and discounting the negative (from earlier deals) and believing that ‘this time is different’ and that history won’t repeat itself (which is particularly galling to an amateur historian such as me).
I very much like to see more work on this, would be particularly interested in hearing if there are any new studies on the linkages between behavioural finance and the drivers to M&A deals … or just some observations by any readers.
Intelligent Mergers 
Maybe the failure of RBS-ABN Amro deal could be partly attributed to the confirmation bias of the BRS IB management.
vivi
Wednesday, 3 November 2010
Hello Sir,
I have just started my work on behaviour of Top management while taking the decision about mergers & Acquisition. Your article has helped me a lot. Can you please suggest me more ideas about this topic. That will help me to be more focused.
Monika
Friday, 17 May 2013
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and corporate restructuring are a big part of the corporate finance world.
NicolaHarrison
Friday, 22 January 2016