Overlapping insiders and the method of payment in acquisitions: New tests and evidence on adverse selection

Exploiting a unique setting of overlapping insiders between acquirers and targets in India, we examine how information asymmetry between the transacting parties influences the returns to acquiring firms' shareholders, as well as the method of payment. Using a novel dataset, we find that cash-financed deals generate greater (no significantly different) value for acquiring firms’ shareholders than stock-financed ones when insiders are non-overlapping (overlapping) between acquiring and target firms. Further, stock-financed deals with overlapping insiders outperform those without them. These results indicate that the adverse selection effect of stock issues in stock-financed acquisitions with asymmetric information between the transacting parties is the key reason behind the underperformance of stock-financed deals. We also find that acquisitions with overlapping insiders on both sides of the deal have a significantly higher incidence of financing with stock than those with non-overlapping insiders. However, the positive effect of overlapping insiders on the propensity of acquisition financing with stock becomes weaker when acquiring and target firms are in the same industry. These results suggest that the effect of a particular channel of information asymmetry reduction on the payment method is greatest in the absence of other channels. Our results are robust to several checks.