This paper characterizes how a target firm should be sold when the possible buyers (bidders) have prior stakes in its ownership (toeholds). We find that the optimal mechanism needs to be implemented by a non-standard auction which imposes a bias against bidders with high toeholds. This discriminatory procedure is such that the target´s average sale price is increasing in both the size of the common toehold and the degree of asymmetry in these stakes. It is also shown that a simple mechanism of sequential negotiation replicates the main properties of the optimal procedure and yields a higher average selling price than the standard auctions commonly used in takeover battles.
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Paper provided by Universidad Carlos III, Departamento de Economía in its series Economics Working Papers with number
we083217.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Jeremy I. Bulow & Paul D. Klemperer, 2007.
"When are Auctions Best?,"
NBER Working Papers
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[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Jeremy Bulow & Paul Klemperer, 2007.
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Economics Papers
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[Downloadable!]
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[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Jeremy Bulow & Ming Huang & Paul Klemperer, 1999.
"Toeholds and Takeovers,"
Finance
9903005, EconWPA.
[Downloadable!]
Jeremy Bulow & Ming Huang & Paul Klemperer, 1996.
"Toeholds and Takeovers,"
Finance
9608001, EconWPA.
[Downloadable!]
Riley, John G & Samuelson, William F, 1981.
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American Economic Review,
American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 381-92, June.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
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