O Efeito-Controle no Prémio pago em Tomadas de Posições Accionistas

• Autor(a) principal: Ribeiro, Nuno André da Costa
• Data de Publicação: 2006
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10216/9186
• topic: CIÊNCIAS EMPRESARIAIS; Porto

The aim of this work is essentially to study the way the premium paid in the acquisition of equity stakes varies according to the percentage of equity acquired in the deal. The transactions involving control transfers must take into account not only the size of the equity stake acquired but also the percentage of shares held before the purchase, usually called the toehold. One should expect that the acquisition of controlling blockholdings should be associated with higher control premiums. Using a set of 162 acquisitions of blockholdings in firms quoted in AMEX, NASDAQ and NYSE, between January 2002 and August 2006, we observe that a quadratic specification on shares acquired + toehold is statistically inadequate to explain the control premium. This hypothesis would configure the existence of a maximum premium, as a critical dimension of control was reached. The main finding is that the control premium tends to increase linearly as the fractional size of a block increases. In fact, holding other variables constant, the control premium rises about 4,36 percentage points as the result of an increase of 10 percentage points in the fractional size of shares acquired. This is partially consistent with the existence of private benefits of control and the argument that control has value, since a higher ownership incorporates more voting rights and, thus, leading to a superior influence in management and the possibility of extracting private benefits. This finding is robust to different alternative specifications for the determinants of premium. However, this result might also be in accordance with the idea that a larger premium is necessary simply to entice shareholders to sell their shares if these are reluctant to do so at current prices or when only small premiums are offered. Such attitude might be due to different expectations or free-riding behaviour by shareholders [Grossman and Hart (1980)]. Additionally, we find empirical evidence that controlling blocks are traded with a larger premium. However, this last conclusion should be interpreted cautiously, motivated by questions related with the size of the sample.