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Abstract

This paper investigates how the financial reporting standards of takeover bids’ targets affect peers’ selection by practitioners implementing comparable valuation methods (i.e. multiples of similar companies or similar transactions). We take advantage of the coexistence of local GAAP and IFRS in France, and of the disclosure of targets’ valuation in takeover bids prospectuses, to analyze publicly available valuations performed by acquirers and independent experts between 1999 and 2016. We show that practitioners do not differentiate between local GAAP and IFRS when selecting foreign peers for targets’ valuation, even after the mandatory adoption of IFRS in 2005. In addition, the analysis of the criteria mentioned in the valuation reports shows that practitioners care about the “business model” of the firm (industry, size, geographical segment) for peers’ selection, but not about financial reporting standards. Finally, foreign peers are generally selected in three countries with large stock markets (US, UK and Germany), without considering the different financial reporting standards of those peers. Overall, our paper supports the idea that accounting numbers are important for practitioners when evaluating a company, because they usually implement comparable valuation methods, but they often make errors when implementing such methods by selecting peers using different accounting standards. In addition, our paper highlights a new benefit of IFRS adoption: it has lowered this peers’ selection bias.

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