Experts in M&A attend Mergers and Acquisitions Research Centre’s sixth Annual Conference

Expert leaders from the world of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) attended the sixth Mergers and Acquisitions Research Centre (MARC) Annual Conference, to discuss the latest trends and developments impacting the industry.

The largest academic conference of its kind, the MARC Annual Conference welcomed more than 65 delegates, with attendees hearing from academic contributors who discussed their latest research findings. Just seven papers of approximately 70 papers submitted were selected for discussion at this year’s conference, following a competitive selection process, with the standard of submissions extremely high.

The conference, hosted by Bayes Business School and held in cooperation with the European Corporate Governance Institute, was the first to be held in a hybrid format and was available to online viewers as well.

Jarrad Harford presents to the audience at the MARC Annual Conference

On the agenda were issues such as deal structure from financing to integration, activism, regulatory changes, domestic and cross border transactions, climate and innovation among, others.

Sessions were chaired by experts in the field, and included a keynote from Giovanni Amodeo, Chief Data Officer at ION Analytics/Mergermarket. Mr Amodeo discussed trends in M&A, debt insurance and fund raising, and the impact of using data to build information.

Professor Scott Moeller, Director of MARC, said at the end of the conference:

“It was a very interesting day where we learned a great deal from our distinguished speakers and discussants who have flown in for this conference from around the world and as far away as Australia and the West Coast of the US.  There were many people who made this possible, so thank you to them.”

Professor Anh Tran, Professor of Finance, who co-hosted with Professor Moeller, said: “It was nice to see so many great scholars back in person at the business school as it was for the first four annual conferences. The level of interaction and knowledge exchange were phenomenal.”

Professor Andre Spicer, Dean at Bayes Business School, speaks to the delegates

Presenters throughout the day were:

• Tom Griffin (Villanova University): ‘Does Regulatory Exposure Create M&A Synergies?’
• Micah Officer (Loyola Marymount University): ‘The (Un)intended Consequences of M&A Regulatory Enforcements.’
• Tingting Liu (Iowa State University): ‘Winner’s Curse in Takeovers? Evidence from Investment Bank Valuation Disagreement.’
• Jarrad Harford (University of Washington): ‘Mergers under the Microscope: Analyzing Conference Call Transcripts.’
• Stefan Obernberger (Erasmus University): ‘Post-merger Restructuring of the Labor Force.’
• Fei Xie (University of Delaware): ‘Climate Laws and Cross-border Mergers and Acquisitions.’
• Muhammad Farooq Ahmad (SKEMA Business School): ‘The Innovation Arms Race.’

Find out more about the Mergers and Acquisitions Research Centre on the Bayes Business School website.

Ends

Notes to editors

1. As of January 2021, four out of eight papers presented at our first conference in 2016 have been published in the Journal of Finance and the Review of Financial Studies. Four out of seven papers presented at our second conference in 2017 have been published in the Journal of Financial Economics, the Review of Financial Studies, and the Journal of Accounting Research.