Does Hiring M & A Advisers Matter for Private Sellers?

Authors

Anup Agrawal, University of Alabama
Tommy Cooper, Add Source Group LLC
Qin Lian, Portland State UniversityFollow
Qiming Wang, Willamette University

Published In

Quarterly Journal of Finance

Document Type

Citation

Publication Date

3-11-2023

Abstract

M&A advisers can find and negotiate better deals for sellers, but hiring them entails fees and potential agency costs. Using a novel, hand-collected dataset on the hiring of seller advisers for a large sample of M&A deals, we find that private sellers use advisers or top-tier advisers when it makes economic sense. After accounting for this selection effect, advisers and top-tier advisers positively affect deal valuations. We find some evidence that acquirers’ announcement returns are lower in deals where private sellers use advisers. Our findings suggest that M&A advisers can find and negotiate better deals for private sellers.

Rights

© 2023 World Scientific Publishing Co Pte Lt

Locate the Document

https://doi.org/10.1142/S2010139223500040

DOI

10.1142/S2010139223500040

Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/39733

Citation Details

Agrawal, A., Cooper, T., Lian, Q., & Wang, Q. (2023). Does Hiring M&A Advisers Matter for Private Sellers? The Quarterly Journal of Finance. https://doi.org/10.1142/s2010139223500040