Market reaction to private equity deal announcements

This thesis investigates whether and how target shareholders benefit in leveraged buyout deals in which the target is a public company and the acquirer is a private equity firm. We conduct an event study and run cross sectional regressions of cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) on various firm characteristics. Target CARs average 21.17% in the 3-day event window surrounding the announcement of leveraged buyout transactions. Regression results indicate that CARs decrease with target firm size.