The ‘New’ Attention of Merger & Acquisition Announcements

This paper analyses in what way the new form of attention, measured by the amount of ticker searches via thewell-knownsearch engine GoogleTrends,isrelated to the stock performance of target firms during an M&A announcement in the US during the years 2012 to 2016. Wedetermined the abnormal returnsof the targets’stock priceandits correspondingabnormal attentionduring the announcement. We found a positive cumulative abnormal return of approximately 30%(event window (-1,1))and a significant amount of abnormal ticker searches during an M&A announcement. In this paper, we found asignificantpositiverelationship within the abnormal returnsand the abnormal attention during the M&A announcement. Therefore, the search behaviourof investors can declare the stock market response due to an M&A announcement. We did not find evidence for insider trading or information leakage the days prior to the M&A announcement.