Business Acquisition Disclosures: The Effect of Identifying Intangible Assets on Investors' Judgments

• 成果类型: Article; Early Access
• 署名作者: Leitter, Zheng; Koonce, Lisa; White, Brian
• 署名单位: Nanyang Technological University; University of Texas System; University of Texas Austin; Cornell University
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2023.02673
• 发表日期: 2025
• 关键词: disclosure; goodwill; Intangible assets; business acquisitions

摘要

Disclosures about a business acquisition help investors understand what assets are acquired and how the acquiring company plans to benefit from the transaction. However, in practice, these disclosures exhibit significant variation and often fall short of providing meaningful information to investors. Our experiment provides evidence that separately identifying intangible assets acquired in a business combination (i.e., what was acquired) can compensate for shortcomings in an acquirer's disclosures about how the transaction will benefit the acquiring firm. An additional experiment indicates that the benefits of separately identifying acquired assets do not extend to tangible assets, suggesting our insights may be unique to intangibles.