The medium-long term impact of cross-border investments into Sub- Saharan Africa by listed South African companies

Abstract

Research into whether the medium-long term impact on shareholders’ value of acquiring companies engaged in cross-border merger and acquisition transactions (CBMA) into Sub-Saharan Africa. By focussing on companies listed on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange (“JSE”) and testing the general hypothesis whether the shareholders of acquiring companies earn statistically significant positive or negative returns within the medium-long term after the announcement date of a cross-border merger and acquisition transaction. Out of a total of 10,167 merger and acquisition transactions over the eight-year period between 2000 and 2007, only 12 cross-border mergers and acquisitions into Sub-Saharan Africa satisfied all the selection criteria. By exhaustive application of the single-factor market model to calculate the regression formula using 4 years of historical share price performance data, the results suggested that statistically significant negative weighted average abnormal returns for shareholders are consistently present over the event window. The study on the medium-long term event window starting 21 days prior to the first public announce of the transactions and continued up to 252 trading days after the announcement date. Thus it satisfied common critique by researchers about the true value of short term event studies for companies and their shareholders. Copyright