This study examines the impact of mutual fund mergers on performance and investment flows of target and acquiring funds. Results indicate some improvements in the post-merger performance for target funds shareholders. Results also confirm prior evidence of negative net asset flows in target funds in the premerger period as well as negative, but not significant, net asset flows in the years following the merger. However, a more detailed analysis allows us to observe that this lack of significance in the negative reaction of investors to mutual fund mergers is explained by the compensation of abnormally high inflows and outflows in the resultant funds. These substantial flows are significantly above the average in their market segment, especially regarding money flows. This finding provides evidence that investors pay attention to mutual fund mergers, especially institutional investors who are concentrated on the market possibilities resulting from these organizational processes.

In this article, we contribute to financial literature on institutional herding behaviour, intertemporal imitation and informational cascades by analysing the changes in the strategic asset allocations of Spanish equity pension plans investing in Eurozone equities. This article is mainly focused on methodological improvements. Firstly, the study examines the herding phenomenon by using the traditional measure developed by Lakonishok, Shleifer and Vishny (LSV) (1992). Afterwards, some original analyses such as the consideration of a restricted definition of buying and selling and the amount of the variations in the strategic allocations are carried out to overcome certain shortcomings existing in this metric. Moreover, we analyse the intertemporal imitation and the informational cascades through time-series regressions. The results show that Spanish pension managers are involved in herd behaviour, a phenomenon that is reinforced when important movements of the strategic allocations are required. Intertemporal analyses confirm the convergent behaviour of a significant number of pension plans; while the study of informational cascades allows us to discriminate between those plans that present anticipatory abilities and those that follow the strategic movements of the rest of the managers.

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We analyse the herding phenomenon in the management style of Spanish equity funds. Using the methodology of Lakonishok et al. (1992) and Sharpe's style analysis (1992), we find interesting conclusions in the investment behaviour of fund managers, a barely-explored aspect, especially in the Spanish market.

This study examines the performance of managers over time, as well as its persistence, taking into account both manager characteristics and market conditions. Applying parametric and non-parametric methodologies, we examine a sample of UK equity pension fund managers. Our results help to understand the importance of manager assignments in the industry and reveal the importance and benefits of management specialization. We find certain manager performance persistence, revealing that some managers are better than others and possess superior investment skills. Additionally, we find that managers achieve better results when they run a single fund or one investmentobjective funds, which allows managers to focus on specific tasks. Nonetheless, manager performance varies with market conditions and highlights managers' different skills. Specialist managers perform better in bullish markets, and generalists perform better in bearish periods.