Investment Banks as Insiders and the Market for Corporate Control
研究发现，为收购方提供建议的投资银行会在并购公告前买入目标公司股票，且持股比例与交易完成概率和溢价正相关，但这类交易并未创造财富，揭示了金融集团内部的利益冲突。
We study holdings in M&A targets by financial conglomerates which affiliated investment banks advise the bidders. We show that advisors take positions in the targets before M&A announcements. These stakes are positively related to the probability of observing the bid and to the target premium. We argue that this can be explained in terms of advisors, privy to important information about the deal, investing in the target in the expectation of its price to increase. We document the high profits of this strategy. We also document a positive relationship between the advisory stake and the deal characteristics. The advisory stake is positively related to the likelihood of deal completion and to the termination fees. However, these deals are not wealth-creating: there is a negative relation between the advisory stake and the viability of the deal. These results provide new insights into the conflicts of interest affecting financial