The Effect of Pre-acquisition financial statement comparability of target firms on post-acquisition performance of acquirer firms / Noha Mostafa Abdelrahim Mousa ; Supervised Ahmed Fouad Elbayoumi

Thesis (M.Sc.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Commerce - Department of Accounting

The current study aims generally to define the beneficial role of financial reporting comparability on the acquisition market. This issue is investigated by examining the relationship among target firms' financial statements comparability and the performance of the acquiring firms and target firms and whether this relation is more pronounced in interindustry acquisition than in intra acquisition. To measure target firms' financial statements comparability, an earnings-returns mapping based measure has been used as this measure was commonly utilized in the literature. The current study employs the change in return on assets to measure the post-acquisition performance of both acquirers and target firms. The research model depends on linear regression analysis and assumes interaction between target firms' financial statements comparability and post-acquisition performance of both acquirers and target firms.On examining the effect of financial statement comparability on the post-acquisition performance of the acquirer, it is found that there is no significant relationship between the two variables. However, on examining the effect of financial statement comparability on postacquisition performance of target firms, it is found that there is a significant positive relationship between the two variables which means that reliable financial information provides a less biased performance measure, that helps to reward managers for conducting good investment decisions and punish them for making bad decisions and that companies benefit from higher quality disclosures

Issued also as CD