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Liquidity Mergers

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  • Heitor Almeida
  • Murillo Campello
  • Dirk Hackbarth

Abstract

We study the interplay between corporate liquidity and asset reallocation opportunities. Our model shows that financially distressed firms are acquired by liquid firms in their industries even when there are no operational synergies associated with the merger. We call these transactions “liquidity mergers,” since their main purpose is to reallocate liquidity to firms that might be otherwise inefficiently terminated. We show that liquidity mergers are more likely to occur when industry-level asset specificity is high (i.e., industry-specific rents are high) and firm-level asset specificity is low (industry counterparts can efficiently operate distressed firms’ assets). We also provide a detailed analysis of firms’ liquidity policies as a function of real asset reallocation, examining the trade-offs between cash and lines of credit. The model makes a number of predictions that have not been examined in the literature. Using a large sample of mergers, we verify the model’s prediction that liquidity-driven acquisitions are more likely to occur in industries in which assets are industry-specific, but transferable across industry rival firms. We also verify the prediction that firms are more likely to use credit lines (relative to cash) when they operate in industries in which liquidity mergers are more frequent.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number 16724.

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Date of creation: Jan 2011
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Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:16724

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References

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Citations

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Cited by:
  1. Toni Beutler & Mathieu Grobéty, 2011. "The Collateral Channel under Imperfect Debt Enforcement," Working Papers 11.11, Swiss National Bank, Study Center Gerzensee.
  2. Andrei Shleifer & Robert Vishny, 2011. "Fire Sales in Finance and Macroeconomics," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 25(1), pages 29-48, Winter.
  3. Filippo Ippolito & Ander Perez, 2012. "Credit Lines: The Other Side of Corporate Liquidity," Working Papers 618, Barcelona Graduate School of Economics.
  4. Filippo Ippolito & Ander Pérez Orive, 2012. "Credit lines: The other side of corporate liquidity," Economics Working Papers 1311, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
  5. Gregor Matvos & Amit Seru, 2011. "Resource Allocation within Firms and Financial Market Dislocation: Evidence from Diversified Conglomerates," NBER Working Papers 17717, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

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