I finally completed the classification of the M&A transactions over $500mn and have ended up with 897 transactions. By the time I have eliminated transactions for which there is less than complete data, the final data set is just over 700 transactions. These represent over $4 trillion in transaction value and $20 trillion of market value as at the merger effective date.
What is very exciting is that the observation I made back in May still appears to be true: based on a simple comparison of the changes in aggregate market value versus changes in the S&P index over a 2 year period since the merger became effective, the companies using one of the 8 “sophisticated” brand strategies outperformed those using the two “expedient” forms of brand strategy by 6%.
This is encouraging – but this analysis is crude. It remains to be seen if this result will be replicated when the data set is subjected to a proper abnormal stock returns analysis.
