The value effects of Mergers and Acquisitions in the US financial market.

Introduction The global nancial crisis of 2007 and 2008 is a complex and multifaceted pro- cess. Its underlying causes shall be attributed to the prevalent excess liquidity, as well as to the un-orderly proliferation of subprime mortgages in the United States, coupled with inadequate asset/liability and risk management practices of nancial institutions. Proliferation of this crisis can be explained in terms of changes in the allocation of the global savings that have become increasingly illiquid. According to this, the crisis has followed dierent stages. In fact, it began with the housing bubble in the U.S. that was inated by subprime and near prime (so called Alt-A) mortgage lending, and then, it spread to other types of assets, aecting not only mortgage companies and specialized investment banks, but also universal banks. Subsequently, the nancial crisis triggering the global liquidity crisis accompa- nied by a massive pullout of liabilities from the most severely exposed banks, i.e. Northern Rock, Bear Stearns and, later, Lehman Brothers, causing anxiety about possible credit contagion from counterparty risk on the global scale. The collapse of structured investment products, mainly collateralized debt obli- gations (CDOs), shifted the global liquidity allocations into commodity futures market. This led to bubble eects in the commodity market as well. Finally, the crisis reached its peak when Lehman Brothers led for bankruptcy and US invest- ment banking system plummeted. As consequence of the nancial crisis and the implications described above, some investment banks have faced the risk of bankruptcy. In order to avoid the collapse of relevant nancial institutions, Mergers and Acquisitions practice occurred. In this work I will analyze the value eects of M&A in the US banking sector. This will be compared with the eects of the nationalization strategy adopted in the UK nancial market. The structure of the thesis follows. The key factors contributing to the decline of the housing market and the sub- prime mortgage market in the U.S. are examined in the chapter 1, entitled "An