Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.
Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3
Filtering by
- All Subjects: Private Equity
- Creators: Department of Economics
Description
In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, banking regulators have been taking a more active role in pursing greater financial stability. One area of focus has been on Wall Street banks' leverage lending practices which include leveraged lending activities to fund leveraged buyouts. In March 2013, the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued guidance urging banks to avoid financing leveraged buyouts in most industries that would put total debt on a company of more than six times its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or Ebitda. Our research, using data on all leveraged buyouts (with EBITDA >$20 million) issued after the guidance, sets out to explain the elements banks consider when exceeding leverage limitations. Initially, we hypothesized that since deals over 6x leverage had higher amounts of debt, they were riskier deals, which would carry over to other risk measures such as yield to maturity on debt and company credit ratings. To analyze this, we obtained a large data set with all LBO deals in the past three years and ran difference-in-means tests on a number of variables such as deal size, credit rating and yield to maturity to determine if deals over 6x leverage had significantly different risk characteristics than deals under 6x leverage. Contrary to our hypothesis, we found that deals over 6x leverage had significantly less risk, mainly demonstrated by lower average YTMs, than deals under 6x. One possible explanation of this might be that banks, wanting to ensure they are not fined, will only go through with a deal over 6x leverage if other risk metrics such as yield to maturity are well below average.
ContributorsKing, Adam (Co-author) / Lukemire, Sean (Co-author) / McAleer, Stephen (Co-author) / Simonson, Mark (Thesis director) / Bonadurer, Werner (Committee member) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Department of Economics (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
This paper classifies private equity groups (PEGs) seeking to engage in public to private transactions (PTPs) and determines (primarily through an examination of the implied merger arbitrage spread), whether certain reputational factors associated with the private equity industry affect a firm's ability to acquire a publicly-traded company. We use a sample of 1,027 US-based take private transactions announced between January 5, 2009 and August 2, 2018, where 333 transactions consist of private-equity led take-privates, to investigate how merger arbitrage spreads, offer premiums, and deal closure are impacted based on PEG- and PTP-specific input variables. We find that the merger arbitrage spread of PEG-backed deals are 2-3% wider than strategic deals, hostile deals have a greater merger arbitrage spread, larger bid premiums widen spreads and markets accurately identify deals that will close through a narrower spread. PEG deals offer lower premiums, as well as friendly deals and larger deals. Offer premiums are 8.2% larger among deals that eventually consummate. In a logistic regression, we identified that PEG deals are less likely to close than strategic deals, however friendly deals are much more likely to close and Mega Funds are more likely to consummate deals among their PEG peers. These findings support previous research on PTP deals. The insignificance of PEG-classified variables on arbitrage spreads and premiums suggest that investors do not differentiate PEG-backed deals by PEG due to most PEGs equal ability to raise competitive financing. However, Mega Funds are more likely to close deals, and thus, we identify that merger arbitrage spreads should be narrower among this PEG classification.
ContributorsSliwicki, Austin James (Co-author) / Schifman, Eli (Co-author) / Simonson, Mark (Thesis director) / Hertzel, Michael (Committee member) / Department of Economics (Contributor) / School of Accountancy (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
The following thesis discusses the primary drivers of value creation in a leveraged buyout. Value creation is defined by two broad criteria: enterprise value creation and financial value creation. With enterprise value creation, the company itself may be improved, which in turn may have positive implications on the economy at large. As the analysis of enterprise value creation is outside the scope of publicly available information and data, the core focus of this thesis is financial value creation. Financial value creation is defined as the financial returns to a given private equity firm. Amongst this segment of value creation, there are roughly three primary categories responsible for generating returns: financial engineering, governance improvements, and operational improvements. The attached literature review and subsequent chapters of this thesis discuss the academic drivers of value creation and the outputs of a leveraged buyout model conducted on a public company, Schnitzer Steel, that has been determined to be an ideal candidate for a buyout.
ContributorsAlivarius, Chadwick (Author) / Simonson, Mark (Thesis director) / Stein, Luke (Committee member) / Department of Finance (Contributor) / Department of Economics (Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05