Premium
Motives and Consequences of White Knight Takeovers
Author(s) -
Chen Xing,
Ullah Saif
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of corporate accounting and finance
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1097-0053
pISSN - 1044-8136
DOI - 10.1002/jcaf.22342
Subject(s) - knight , shareholder , white (mutation) , database transaction , business , value (mathematics) , accounting , economics , monetary economics , financial economics , finance , corporate governance , computer science , biochemistry , chemistry , physics , astronomy , gene , programming language , machine learning
Previous studies have shown that shareholders of acquiring firms experience negative returns during takeover contests. Our investigation of white knights confirms these results using both short‐term and long‐term abnormal returns around such contests. Our results suggest that white knight bidders experience performance similar to other friendly bidders after making a bid. However, we find no significant effect of financial strength and ownership structure on the likelihood of a white knight takeover attempt. Instead, we find that having a classified board is an important determinant in predicting whether a firm will make a bid as a white knight. We find that white knight bidders are more likely to succeed as they offer a higher transaction value to target firms' shareholders.