Foundations of mergers and acquisitions

Abstract

To address the company which initially offers to buy another company in an acquisition, some authors use the term “buyer” or “acquirer” (e.g., Caiazza & Volpe, 2015; Cording, Christmann, & King, 2008; Moeller & Schlingemann, 2004; Shimizu et al., 2004), whereas others use the term “bidder” (Larsson & Finkelstein, 1999; Mirc, 2014; Morosini et al., 1998), irrespective of whether the “bidder” actually buys the target firm or not. The acquired company is most commonly referred to as the “target” or “target firm” (e.g., Bauer, Matzler, & Wolf, 2016; Morosini et al., 1998). As the main literature used in the work at hand used the terms “bidder” and “target”, we will follow this terminology.