Paper Title
Market Reactions toward Mergers and Acquisitions Announcement in Telecommunication Firms Listed in Asia-Pacific Stock Markets

Abstract
This research examines market reactions toward mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in telecommunications firms in Asia-Pacific which covers 17 firms that have conducted Mergers and Acquisitions over 2011-2014 by measuring the abnormal return during 10 days before and 10 days after M&A announcement with the estimation period of 100 days. The object of this research was to measure the announcement effect on share return, trading volume and share price volatility by conducting event study. While, to analyze the return of CARs (Cumulative Abnormal Returns) during the event window is computed and AVARit(Average Volatility Abnormal Return) is calculated to know the share price volatility. The firm’s characteristics such as profitability, leverage, and firm’s age were also analyzed in this study to know whether those characteristics has an impact on share return, trading volume and share price volatility within the M&A announcements. The result shown that there is no significant different between the abnormal return before and after announcement. The same results are also shown in both trading volume and volatility (AVAR) before and after announcement. Furthermore, the firms’ characteristics have no significant impact on both CAR and AVAR with the total impact of 26.6% and 9.12% respectively; meanwhile the remaining 73.4% and 90.88% are contributed by another variable that is not included in this research. Relates to the market efficiency theory, this market is considered as semi-strong market efficient. Keywords: Abnormal Returns, M&As, Market Reactions, Shareholder Value, Firm’s Characteristics