Acquisitions May Weigh on Stocks

Seventy percent of companies whose shares fall relative to the stock market at the time they announce acquisitions are still down a year later, a PricewaterhouseCoopers study found.

The study, released Wednesday, tracked the performance of 97 public companies that completed acquisitions worth $500 million or more from January 1994 to June 1997.

The study found that 63% of the companies that announced acquisitions saw their share prices decline relative to the market in the period from five days before the merger was announced through five days after the announcement.

Of the companies whose shares fell relative to the stock market in that 10-day period, 70% were still down a year later.