Is Cash better than Equity as Takeover Payment? - Learning from Korean Cases -

This paper examines the relationship between the abnormal stock returns upon announcement and the choice of takeover payment methods, say, cash or equity, for the Korean mergers and acquisitions during 1996-2008 in which for some period, say, 1996-2000, liquidity is very scarce and market is uncertain. We test two hypotheses; first, whether equity payments reduce bidders’ firm value; second, whether cash payments are more (or less) likely preferred by the target shareholders who are facing high uncertainty. Unlike US experience, we fail to find statistical evidence that equity offers reduce bidders’ firm value. Further, while the bidder shareholders gain on average wealth of 1.8% from the M&A transactions, whether they pay in cash or equity, they earn positive 0.1% or 3.5% gain, respectively. These results contradict to the conventional asymmetric information model where market valuation of bidder’s equity plays an important role for the determination of payment alternatives. While examining the wealth gains of target shareholders, we find statistical evidence that cash payments are preferred to equity payments. Further, if they are paid by cash (equity), they earn 6.2% (-5.1%) gain. We conclude that under the liquidity-scarce and uncertain situation, cash is king! Sellers prefer cash rather than taking risk for future higher return. The use of buyer cash would attract more sellers. Buyers prefer equity payments not because of their equity’s overvaluation (conventional model), but because of their cash saving for their lucrative takeovers.