{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.02496255616575137, 'fraction_numerical': 0.004992511233150275, 'mean_word_length': 5.128440366972477, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Does Merger Type or Industry Affect Operating Performance of Acquiring Firms? A Long-Term Merger Performance Study in India

Mergers and Acquisitions (M&As) 
are being increasingly used the world over, for improving competitiveness of 
firms through gaining greater size and/or market share, broadening the 
product/service portfolio, reducing business/financial risk, entering new 
markets and geographies, and consolidation for achieving economies of scale 
etc. While there has been lot of hype and hope around mergers, and research 
about stock market reactions to such announcements, it is important to examine, 
if merging with other firms in same or other industries, actually improves the 
financial operating performance, for justifying such merger activities. This 
research study has aimed to study the impact of mergers on the operating 
performance of acquiring firms, by examining pre-merger and post-merger 
financial performance ratios, using the sample set of publicly traded acquiring 
firms in India between 1991-2015. Further, the sample has been segregated to 
study the impact for 1) mergers occurring among different industry segments, 
and 2) mergers between acquiring and acquired firms belonging to same industry (horizontal 
or vertical), or between firms in unrelated industries (conglomerate). The results 
from the analysis suggest that there are variations in terms of impact of 
mergers on operating performance, in different industry sectors in India. In 
particular, there was a positive impact on profitability for acquiring firms in 
the Banking & Financial Services industry, while the impact was 
significantly negative for mergers in Sugar & Agri-Products, Pharmaceutical 
and Textiles Sectors. The impact was mildly negative for Chemicals Sector, and 
mixed impact for the other sectors. Also, mergers seem to have caused 
significant decline in returns performance for horizontal mergers, while the 
impact has been neutral for vertical and conglomerate mergers.