This study analyzes the effect of changes in corporate control on the way shareholders benefit from the announcements of selling and buying airlines, thus contributing to the literature on mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in emerging markets. Using a methodology of event study, including GARCH and OLS models, we find evidence that some selling companies obtain abnormal returns that are statistically significant after the announcement of the M&A. However, when the merger is not strategic, the companies present statistically significant negative abnormal returns. The results are not conclusive when analyzing the effect on the value of the buying companies.

This article examines the impact of industrial productivity in the country of origin on transnationals M&As, directed from OECD countries toward Latin America in the period 1996–2010. It also analyzes the relationship between external mechanisms of corporate governance and transnational M&As. Employing a gravitational model at the industry level, we find that industry productivity in the country of origin promotes transnational M&A activity, although capital productivity affects it negatively. We also find evidence that higher standards of corporate governance in both origin and destination countries increase the likelihood of transnational M&As taking place.

This article contributes to the current literature on mergers and acquisitions (M&As) by identifying the existence of waves and the determinants of M&A activity in the economies of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru. From a sample of 2,391 M&A announcements reported by Thomson One on these countries, applying the methodology proposed by Harford (2005), evidence of M&A waves is found for the periods 1995–2002 and 2003–2010, as reported for other regions in various international studies. After controlling for economic and business environment variables, as well as for profitability and book-to-market variables at the industry level, we find evidence that supports neoclassical theory as a main explanation for M&A activity but not for the misvaluation effect.

Energy transactions in liberalized markets are subject to price and quantity uncertainty. This paper considers the spot price and energy generation to follow a bivariate semi-nonparametric distribution defined in terms of the Gram–Charlier expansion. This distribution allows us to jointly model not only mean, variance, and correlation but also skewness, kurtosis, and higher-order moments. Based on this model, we propose a static hedging strategy for electricity generators that participate in a competitive market where hedging is carried out through forward contracts that include a risk premium in their valuation. For this purpose, we use Monte Carlo simulation and consider information from the Colombian electricity market as the case study. The results show that the volume of energy to be sold under long-term contracts depends on each electricity generator and the risk assessment made by the market in the forward risk premium. The conditions of skewness, kurtosis, and correlation, as well as the type of the employed risk indicator, affect the hedging strategy that each electricity generator should implement. A positive correlation between the spot price and energy production tends to increase the hedge ratio; meanwhile, negative correlation tends to reduce it. The increase of forward risk premium, on the other hand, reduces the hedge ratio.