AUTHOR
Johansson, Jesper

DATE
2000-03-06

DEPARTMENT
Business Administration and Social Sciences / Economics

SUMMARY
The purpose of this thesis is to determine the underlying factors of mergers and acquisitions (M&A). The studied period considers the Swedish pulp and paper industry between 1980 and 1995. A logit model has been used to analyse which factors that tend to affect the probability of becoming a merger candidate. The model includes the following variables: profit margin, payout ratio, asset turnover, times earned interest, leverage ratio, current ratio, investment ratio, solvency and efficiency. The result shows that the profit margin, the efficiency ratio and the solvency ratio tend to be the most influenced variables on the probability of being involved in M&A activity in the pulp and paper industry. However, the time earned interest-, leverage-, payout-, invest-, current- and turnover ratio tend to have a small impact on whether a firm should be involved in M&A activity or not.

ISSN 1404-5508 / ISRN LTU-SHU-EX--00/040--SE / NR 2000:040