Geography of Mergers and Acquisitions in the Container Shipping Industry

The paper examines the geographic dimension between acquiring and target firms to take into account the information cost which decreases synergy effects generated by M&As in the container shipping industry. The paper finds that the geographical distance has a negative impact on takeover flows. M&A activities were more intense among firms located closely each other. The paper provides evidence that the firm size raises the relative acquiring probability for inter-regional and cross-border M&As. While the existing literature suggests that financially underperforming firms are more likely to be targeted by a firm, the paper argues that the smaller and unquoted public firms are more vulnerable to M&As.