Anticipation, Acquisitions and the Bidder Return Puzzle

This paper documents a dramatic difference in the abnormal announcement period returns of the first bidder to announce an acquisition attempt in a particular industry. Typical of the literature, the set of all bidders in our sample earn abnormal returns indistinguishable from zero. However, bidders announcing an acquisition after a 'dormant period' of at least a year without such activity in their industry earn significantly positive abnormal returns of 0.8%. This contrasts with the insignificantly negative returns earned by bidders with shorter industry dormant periods. We also document that the prices of subsequent bidders adjust proportionately to returns of the initial bidder at the time of that initial announcement. In addition, bidder abnormal returns are significantly positively related to the length of the dormant period. These results provide strong evidence in support of an anticipation hypothesis. Our results hold after controlling for variables typically associated with bidding firm returns.