The effects of mergers on financial performance of acquirer companies: An application in the BIST

Enterprises may combine with another company for reasons such as expanding their market share, increasing their profits, strengthening their financial structure and protecting them from competition. Enterprises expect an improvement in their financial performance after the merger. Whether or not mergers affect the financial performance is an important issue.In this context, in this study, it is aimed to analyze the effects of 21 mergers of companies, whose shares are traded on the BIST and which are realized by publicly traded companies during the period of 2009-2014, on the financial performance of the acquirer companies in four different aspects such as profitability, activity, liquidity and financial structure. Accounting data based studies method was used to measure the effect of the merger on the financial performance of the acquirer companies and the measurement process was carried out in two different aspects as absolute and relative comparison. In this context, in order to able to make an absolute comparison, The differentiation between the financial performance indicators before and after the merger of the acquirercompanies was examined. Then in order to able to make an relative comparison, the difference between the financial performance indicators of the merged companies and the financial performance indicators of the non - merged companies which werecontrol group was examined (Wilcoxon Signed- Ranks Test was used for this). As a result of analyzes, mergers make an effect on the financial performance of acquirercompanies; this effect has been determined especially on the financial structure and activity structure of the companies, if not literally, and not on the profitability and liquidity structure. Key Words:Merger, acquisition, performance of the company, performance of the merger, performance measurement methods.