This paper aims to provide contemporary and comparative information on mergers and acquisition activities. The findings have shown that Vietnam is very active in mergers and acquisitions activities, for instance in Vietnam 2946 transactions were announced, and 2114 completed in the last decade. Furthermore, Vietnam has a distinctive element of merging local firms; Out of top 20 deals, in 18 transactions target firms and acquirer both were from Vietnam. On the other hand, Sri Lanka has the highest percentage of completed M&A transactions in the last decade compared to Pakistan and Vietnam. In case of Pakistan, the findings suggest that Pakistan has had the highest number of value-based Mergers and Acquisitions deals in comparison to Sri Lanka and Vietnam. Interestingly, even though the number of transactions is higher compared to Sri Lanka and Vietnam; however, mergers and acquisition have had no significant impact on the profitability of Pakistan companies.DOI: 10.15408/sjie.v7i1.6074

The importance of working capital management in generating the corporate profitability cannot be disregarded. This study aims to empirically investigate the impact of working capital management on the profitability of pharmaceutical sector of Pakistan. The study has taken secondary data covering a period of six years from 2011-2016. Current ratio, cash conversion cycle and current assets to total assets were taken as independent variables to represent working capital management and return on the asset taken as the dependent variable to represent corporate profitability. Through panel regression analysis, this study has found a significant impact of current ratio and cash conversion cycle and current assets to total assets have an insignificant impact on corporate profitability. These results give an insight of managing corporate profitability by considering current ratio and cash conversion cycle. This study should be beneficial for the pharmaceutical sector of Pakistan as performance and survival of this sector is important for investor and for the health of the general public. Contribution/ Originality No such studies has been undertaken for the Pharmaceutical Sector Companies of Pakistan. This results of the study are quite aligned with the prior literature not only from Pakistani perspective but also from developing economies context.