Kyssta grodor : En studie av uppköpta svenska börsnoterade företag

Abstract: We have examined the stock development of acquired listed Swedish companies - from the years 1995 to 2005 - upon the official publication of the bid. Thereafter we further investigated if there is a difference in the stock development between companies that are acquired by foreign investorscompared to Swedish investors. Also, a difference in the stock development could be due to the acquired firms’ industry classification and its company size, which we have been looking at. In order to study the bid news impact on the share price, a quantitative study in the form of an event study has been done, where the abnormal return associated with the news has been measured. The research shows that there indeed is a difference between companies acquired by foreign investors versus Swedish. As for industry classification, we find one out of six different industries standing out. The comparisons within the remaining industries shows similar results to the comparison of Swedish and foreign companies we mentioned before. In terms of company size,larger companies have shown a lower cumulative abnormal return compared to smaller companies. Furthermore the research also shows that larger the acquired companies are smaller the difference is in the cumulative abnormal return.