Darryl Laws

 Part III. Qualitative Questions to be asked in Face to Face Interviews.

  1. What role do you typically play in a merger and acquisition transaction?

M&A lawyer ___ If so, Buy side rep ___ or Seller side rep ___

M&A Investment Banker ___ If so, Buy side rep ___ or Seller side rep ___

Private equity buyout fund manager ___

CEO of a Public company ___ CEO of a private company ___

How many years of M&A industry experience do you have? ___

  1. Are you typically a Buyer ___ or Seller ___ [“yes” or “no”]?

  2. In your opinion, what are the five (5) most prominent irrational human behaviors exhibited in an M&A transaction that you have witnessed? 

  3. Please rank the following 1 to 10 with 10 being the highest ranking.

CEO overconfidence ___ CEO Hubris ___ Greed ___ Fear ___

Anchoring bias ___   Confirmation bias ___ Sunk cost fallacy ___ Irrational escalation of commitment ___ Winner’s curse ___ 

  1. Please describe the context and the role of the person exhibiting the irrational human behavior trait? 

  2. Was he / she a CEO of the acquiring company?

  3. What irrational human behavioral trait did the CEO exhibit? 

  4. How was this irrational behavior exhibited?

  5. What do you attribute the cause of the irrational behavior to?

  6. In your opinion did the irrational human behavior have an impact on the final the merger / acquisition transaction’s value?

  7. How did you or a team member countermand the behavior? Did the tactic work?

  8. What recommendation do you have for M&A professionals that encounter irrational human behavior in a M&A transaction?

Qualtrics. My cover letter and questionnaire have been uploaded to Qualtrics for this assignment.


Reporting. Before reporting the results of the data derived from my survey and Likert scale measurements I will attempt to clean duplicate data and removing persons who clicked through without answering all of the questions or did not provide useable data. I will then run SPSS to ascertain the descriptive statistics. Subsequent to running SPSS I will be looking for outliers and patters of missing data that may indicate errors. A decision will have to be made in regard to how to treat missing data. 

I will present my results in four parts: characteristics of elite purposeful sample responding, motives for M&As, CEO behavior types, CEO and PE fund managers motives and impact upon the purchase price paid for the target company and the most chosen valuation analysis method. 

In reporting the survey results, my inferential statistics will address the relationships amongst the variables indicated in my three research questions and relate empirical and inferential predictions to the responses received. First, what are the primary motivations behind an acquisitive CEO for making mergers and or acquisitions? I expect that the primary motivation for M&A is economically (agency remuneration) driven. This finding would be consistent with empirical research conducted by Jensen (1989) and Dahir, Mital, 2012).

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