Short and long term performance of Canadian TSE-listed acquirers

Using 771 acquisitions during 1988-1998, this study empirically tests short- and long-term security price performance of Canadian TSE-listed acquirers. The cumulative abnormal return (CAR) and the buy-and-hold abnormal return (BHAR) methods were use for the short- and the long-term studies respectively. In the short-run study, using the dummy variable method, we test three event windows: (-4; 0), (-1, 0) and (0; 4) with an estimation period of 180 days. Non-significant abnormal returns were found in all cases. For the long-run analysis, different approaches for developing a benchmark portfolio are presented. We compare and empirically test two control firms approaches in the spirit of Barber and Lyon (1997) and Longhran and Vigh (1997) over a one year pre-announcement period and three year post-announcement period. The results are not robust to alternative estimation procedures