Tender offers in Spaintesting the wave

Resumen

One of the most common empirical observations made in the literature on mergers and acquisitions (M&A) is that these operations occur in waves, what it means that there are certain periods in which there is an extraordinary number of such transactions. The aim of this paper is to analyse whether there have been waves in the series of M&A in Spain. For this purpose, we use two econometric methodologies in order to analyse the robustness of the results. Firstly, the procedure proposed by Bai and Perron (1998, 2003) to test for multiple structural changes in the mean of the series and, secondly, a unit root test allowing for two structural breaks in level, which extends the work of Perron and Vogelsang (1992) for nontrending data. Then we attempt to relate the time breaks obtained to relevant economic events so as to explain the phenomenon. The main conclusions indicate the existence of a wave of tender offers in Spanish economy from the end of the eighties to the mid-nineties. It appears that this wave was triggered by a regulatory shock set off by the integration of Spain in the European economic area.