Favourable funding conditions: friend or foe of shipping M&As?

Abstract

Funding conditions do not remain the same. The corporate finance literature documents that variations in funding conditions, for instance in the form of shifts in interest rates, affect banks' and firms' access to capital, as well as investors' security pricing behaviour. The high levels of leverage in the shipping industry make it particularly susceptible to fluctuations in funding conditions, exerting a significant impact on shipping companies' investment decisions. In this paper, we examine the link between funding conditions and investment quality in the shipping industry, focusing on mergers and acquisitions (M&As). We employ the event study methodology to obtain acquirer returns around M&As announcement dates, and multivariate regression to reveal the link between M&As and funding conditions. By using 352 completed acquisitions announced by international shipping companies between 1987 and 2020, we find that shipping companies engage in less value-creating deals in favourable funding conditions; a finding that supports the capital rationing theory. We report that a unit increase in our measure of funding conditions, on average, reduces shareholder value by 1.2% during the deal announcement window. Higher profitability moderates the negative effect of favourable funding conditions on shareholder value. Uncertainty of economic policies in acquirer's nation is associated with even lower deal quality during times of favourable funding conditions, emphasising the inseparable relationship between the economic landscape and shipping. The paper contributes to the shipping M&As literature by showing that the macroeconomic environment can have a great impact on the outcomes of M&A deals, as well as company and deal characteristics. The paper offers several policy implications for shipping companies with M&As intentions, shipping investors, and banks that support shipping.