Returns of merger and acquisition activities in the gaming industry

Authors

Hyun K. Chatfield, University of Nevada Las VegasFollow
Robert E. Chatfield, University of Nevada Las VegasFollow
Yen-Soon Kim, University of Nevada Las VegasFollow

Abstract

The gaming industry experienced numerous merger and acquisition (M&A) activities in the 1990s. This study examines the cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) for gaming target and bidding firms around the announcement of mergers and acquisitions (M&As) from 1985 to 2004. The results showed that both targets and bidders had significant positive returns. The study finds that gaming targets enjoy significant positive returns consistent with the literature. Gaming industry bidders earn significant, positive returns. The literature on bidder returns shows mixed results; some were positive, some were negative but many are not significantly different from zero. The positive bidder returns in the gaming industry found here are possibly caused by the high entry barriers to the gaming industry such as acquiring gaming licenses, familiarity of gaming regulations, and experience. It is generally much more difficult for a non-gaming bidder than a gaming bidder to acquire gaming industry targets. As a result, there is usually much less competition in gaming industry M&As than for other industries. This is likely a major cause of the higher returns for gaming bidders than found for bidders in most other industries.

Keywords

merger and acquisitions, gaming industry, cumulative abnormal return

Chinese Abstract

博彩业兼并和收购活动的收益分析

博彩业在20世纪90年代经历了许多并购（M&A）活动。本研究以1985年至2004年的并购公告为数据来源分析了博彩业目标和投标公司的累计超常收益（CARs）。研究结果表明目标公司和投标公司在并购活动中都有显著的正回报。博彩目标公司回报理想这一结果和其它文献描述一致；然博彩投标公司回报可观这一结果和其它文献却不尽相同。其它研究中，有些发现是正回报，有些却是负回报，但是大多数负回报没有显著异于零。本研究发现博彩业投标公司的正回报得益于进入博彩行业的壁垒甚高，这些壁垒包括获取博彩许可证，熟悉博彩行业规则，具有相关行业经验等等。一般来说，和博彩投标公司相比，非博彩投标公司能够竞中博彩目标公司要困难得多。因此，博彩业中并购活动的竞争激烈程度远低于其它行业，这可能是博彩投标公司与其它行业投标公司相比能获得更高收益的主要原因。

关键词：兼并和收购，博彩业，累计超常收益

DOI

10.5038/2640-6489.3.1.1028

Recommended Citation

Chatfield, H. K., Chatfield, R. E., & Kim, Y. S. (2018). Returns of merger and acquisition activities in the gaming industry. International Interdisciplinary Business-Economics Advancement Journal, 3(1), 40-56. https://www.doi.org/10.5038/2640-6489.3.1.1028

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License