Acquirers' overconfidence : evidence from analysis' forecast

Abstract

To provide an empirical evidence on the ultimate wealth effect of acquirers' overconfidence. Two important findings emerge. Firstly, merger and acquisition activities are value-creating investments for acquirer shareholders in the short-run as well as in the long-run. Secondly, the results indicate that firms are not overconfident when making the merger and acquisition decisions. This is inconsistent with the famous hypothesis by Roll (1986) that acquirers are overconfident in their ability to extract value from acquisition. Interestingly, there is no evidence of the market's overextrapolation hypothesized by Rau and Vermaelen (1998) either. Moreover, the findings are generally robust to alternative methods for estimating overconfidence.