Deal Breakage in Domestic and Cross-Border Mergers and Acquisitions: New Data and Avenues for Research

This Article presents a newly constructed mergers and acquisitions (M&A) data set that can support detailed analysis of deal outcomes, including deal breakage. The main novelty of the data set is a detailed classification scheme for characterizing deal outcomes, using information drawn from public announcements and news reports. The data set also includes a number of variables, hand gathered from press releases and merger agreements, that are unavailable in existing data sets in reliable form, or at all. The data set consists of all definitive, signed M&A transactions involving US public company targets with a deal value of at least $1 billion from 1996 to 2018.

The data set excludes negotiations, hostile bids, and unsolicited offers not resulting in a definitive transaction, which cannot be compared apples to apples with deals involving definitive agreements.