Short Term Announcement Returns to the Bidder**

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the short term abnormal return to the bidding firm’s shareholders in takeover transactions in Finland during the time period from January 2000 to December 2013. Specific features of the market for corporate acquisitions in Finland are that almost all of the transactions are friendly acquisitions and usually aim for 100 % of the target company. We estimate the abnormal return around 314 individual takeover announcements and investigate determinants of the abnormal returns. Our results show that the takeover announcement on average yields a positive abnormal return to the bidding firm’s shareholders, thus, support the value creating hypothesis. The announcement effect on the announcement day is1.4 % and statistically significant. Both pre-event and post-event abnormal returns are statistically insignificant, although there is sign of a negative revaluation in the post-event period. Among the takeover characteristics, we document a significant impact on the bidder’s abnormal return on the announcement day for small deals yielding a higher abnormal return, but a positive relationship between the announcement effect and the relative size of the deal, cross-border deals giving a smaller abnormal return, and indication of diversification deals giving a higher abnormal return to the bidder’s shareholders.