IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/coacre/v33y2016i3p1101-1135.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Abnormal Accruals and Managerial Intent: Evidence from the Timing of Merger Announcements and Completions

Author

Listed:
  • Henock Louis
  • Amy X. Sun

Abstract

We examine acquiring managers' opportunistic reporting behavior around stock†for†stock acquisitions. Using the timing of merger announcements and completions to infer managerial intent, we show that acquirers with the most inflated earnings tend to announce mergers on Fridays, and that they manage earnings several quarters before the merger announcement date. Friday announcers exhibit a stronger negative association between pre†merger announcement abnormal accruals and post†merger announcement market performance than non†Friday announcers. This effect is driven mainly by mergers that are completed relatively quickly after they are announced. Overall, the evidence supports the notion that some acquiring managers inflate earnings prior to announcing the mergers, and time the merger announcements to exploit investor inattention.

Suggested Citation

  • Henock Louis & Amy X. Sun, 2016. "Abnormal Accruals and Managerial Intent: Evidence from the Timing of Merger Announcements and Completions," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 33(3), pages 1101-1135, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:coacre:v:33:y:2016:i:3:p:1101-1135
    DOI: 10.1111/1911-3846.12171
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1911-3846.12171
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1911-3846.12171?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jie (Jack) He & Tingting Liu & Jeffry Netter & Tao Shu, 2020. "Expectation Management in Mergers and Acquisitions," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(3), pages 1205-1226, March.
    2. Huang, Wei & Goodell, John W. & Zhang, Hong, 2019. "Pre-merger management in developing markets: The role of earnings glamor," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    3. Chang, Eric C. & Lin, Tse-Chun & Ma, Xiaorong, 2019. "Does short-selling threat discipline managers in mergers and acquisitions decisions?," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1).
    4. Ephraim Kwashie Thompson & Changki Kim, 2020. "Post-M&A Performance and Failure: Implications of Time until Deal Completion," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(7), pages 1-31, April.
    5. Perafán-Peña, Héctor Fabio & Gill-de-Albornoz, Belén & Giner, Begoña, 2022. "Earnings management of target firms and deal premiums: The role of industry relatedness," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(2).
    6. Luo, Kevin & Tian, Shuairu, 2020. "The “Black Thursday” effect in Chinese stock market," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 27(C).
    7. Shrikant P. Jategaonkar & Linda M. Lovata & Xiaoxiao Song, 2023. "Growth opportunities and earnings management by cross-listed and U.S. firms," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 47(1), pages 157-183, March.
    8. Chad R. Larson & Richard Sloan & Jenny Zha Giedt, 2018. "Defining, measuring, and modeling accruals: a guide for researchers," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 23(3), pages 827-871, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:coacre:v:33:y:2016:i:3:p:1101-1135. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1911-3846 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.