Tracking Mergers and Acquisitions Using Australian Administrative Data

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) can have important implications for competition, prices and productivity. However, there is no comprehensive data on M&A activity in Australia, in part due to the absence of any formal requirement for merger parties to notify the regulator. The lack of data has limited scope for research on the impact of M&A activity. This paper takes an important first step in filling this gap by combining a number of administrative datasets and methodologies to build the first large-scale database of Australian M&A transactions, covering the past 20 years. We take three approaches: following clusters of employees moving between firms in a linked employer-employee database; firms moving between tax consolidated groups; and firms submitting takeovers and other notification forms to the Australian securities regulator. This yields a total of around 1,500 mergers a year. Analysing this database we find that mid-sized, high profit but low productivity firms are most likely to be targets, as are firms with lots of patents, while large entities with trademarks are most likely to be acquirers. Moreover, we find evidence of serial acquisitions taking place, particularly in a number of high-profile industries.