NBER Publications by Karen Wruck

This paper presents clinically-based studies of two acquisitions that received very different stock market reactions at announcement one positive and one negative. Despite the differing market reactions, we find that ultimately neither acquisition created value overall. In exploring the reasons for the acquisition outcomes, we rely primarily on interviews with managers and on internally generated performance data. We compare the results of these analyses to those from analyses of post-acquisition operating and stock price performance traditionally applied to large samples. We draw two primary conclusions. (1) Our findings highlight the difficulty of implementing a successful acquisition strategy and of running an effective internal capital market. Post-acquisition difficulties resulted...