Mergers and Acquisitions in the Luxury Goods Industry: Gains for the Acquiring Shareholders

Three giants of the French and Swiss luxury industry are now taken as a reference to assess the impact that M&A operations can have in this area. This is one of the fewpieces of researchof the literature thatinvestigates mergers and acquisitions(M&As)in the luxury goods industry. In particular, a 19-year timeframe hasbeen analysed, starting in 2000. Theresearch has utilizedanalytical toolssuch as event study and linear regression. With atotal sample of 126deals, the empirical results reveal that luxury goods industry acquisitions do not create any value for the acquiring shareholders with the performance of M&As around the announcement date.However, it is statistically proven that the creative director (whohas become more importantfor companies especially since 2013) contributes to the firm growth and givesonly a significantly positive value for the acquiring shareholderswithin 3 days after the merger and acquisition but not over 11 days.