The Effects of Industry Concentration and Other Factors on Merger Premiums-Horizontal Merger Cases in U.S. Market

There are many different motivations behind merger and acquisition (M&A) and we focused on motivations that hone in to pursue economies-of-scale and to the increase of market power. We want to see whether the incentives to pursue the larger market presence and to make the industry more concentrated are key causes of horizontal merger, how much the degree the industry concentration can affect merger premium, and whether different industry characteristics bring about different results. We picked six industries that experienced waves of M&As since 1996, including car, communication, pharmaceuticals, food, retailing, and electronics industries. Other than industry concentration, we also factor in other variables, such as financial variables and regulatory variables to enhance the accuracy of empirical results.

From the empirical results, the relationships between industry concentration and merger premiums are not always positive in all industries. These can be attributed to the difference of characteristics amongst industries. Other than the factor of industry concentration, acquirers would make “Target’s Debt Degree”, “Intrastate”, “Target’s Profitability”, and “Target’s Market Share (t-1)” into the evaluating lists when deciding the amount of premium to pay.