Banker Fees and Acquisition Premia for Targets in Cash Tender Offers
Challenges to the Popular Wisdom on Banker Conflicts
Charles W. Calomiris, Donna M. Hitscherich | National Bureau of Economic Research
May 01, 2005
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Abstract

We analyze data on fees paid to investment bankers and acquisition premia paid for targets in cash tender offers. Our results are broadly consistent with the predictions of a benign view of the role of investment banks in advising acquisition targets. Fees to investment banks are correlated with attributes of transactions and target firms in ways that make sense if banks are being paid for processing information. The more contingent (and, therefore, risky) the fees, the higher they tend to be, all else held constant. Variation in acquisition premia also can be explained by fundamental deal attributes. Contrary to the jaundiced view of fairness opinions, greater fixity of fees is not associated with higher acquisition premia, and there is no evidence that investment banks are suborned by acquirors with whom they have had a prior banking relationship.

About the Author

 

Charles W.
Calomiris
  • Charles W. Calomiris, who codirected AEI's Financial Deregulation Project until 2007, is concurrently the Henry Kaufman Professor of Financial Institutions at Columbia Business School. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a member of the Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee and the Financial Economists Roundtable, and the coordinator of the "Bank Performance and the Economy" program at the Center for Financial Research at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. His research at AEI spans several areas, from banking and corporate finance to financial history and monetary economics. Mr. Calomiris also served on the 2000 International Financial Institution Advisory Commission. Known as the Meltzer Commission, this congressionally mandated group recommended specific reforms of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the regional development banks, and the World Trade Organization to the U.S. government.
  • Phone: 2128548748
    Email: ccalomiris@aei.org
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