A Critical Review of Performance Puzzle of M&As: British and Irish Results over Few Decades

The purpose of this dissertation is to critically review the performance puzzle of mergers and acquisitions over a past few decades, mostly on British results with minor results, covering Irish experience. It has been seen in the recent past that, with the progression of takeover activity, the debate over its advantageous aspects has considerably increased. However, past extensive research has revealed that, as far as the authenticity of the fact that the transactions of MA value creation process and the bid resistance relationship, size and growth, performance and profitability, and so on. For this reason, the literature review method is being employed in this paper, and ten academic research papers, related to this topic, are being used. After reviewing all the ten research papers, which are being selected in order to provide a comprehensive analysis over the issues under study, it is, thus, possible to draw a conclusion that over all impact of amalgamation activity has generated a mix results in respect to returns to the shareholders of both the target and bidder. Along with that, there are evidences of different results, generates from takeover activity, on the size and growth, performance and profitability, value creation and bid resistance relationship, under different environments. However, the results obtained after examining the different issues under observation can not be termed as a full and final verdict, since the different techniques, methods, data sample, assumptions, have been employed in the ten academic research papers under review.