Empirical Evidence on Relationships between Ex Ante Innovation Pursuit and Post-M&A Performance in the Vietnamese M&A Industry, 2005-2012

This research aims to communicate new results of empirical investigations to learn about the relationship between determination of controlling an acquired firm’s capital, assets and brand versus its capability of innovation and ex post performance of the rising Vietnamese M&A industry in the 2005-2012 period. The analysis employs a categorical data sample, consisting of 212 M&A cases reported by various information sources, and performs a number of logistic regressions with significant results as follows. Firstly, the overall relationship between pre-M&A pursuit’s determination on acquiring resources and performance of the post-M&A performance is found significant. There exist profound effects of a ‘size matters’ strategy in M&A ex post performance. When there is an overwhelming ‘resources acquiring’ strategy, the innovation factor’s explanatory power becomes negligible. Secondly, for negative performance of post-M&A operations, the emphasis on both capital base and asset size, and the brand value at the time of the M&A pursuit is the major explanation in the post-M&A period. So does the absence of innovation as a goal in the pre-M&A period. These two insights together are useful in careful M&A planning. Lastly, expensive pre-M&A expenditures tend to adversely affect the post-M&A performance. As a general conclusion, this study shows that innovation can be an important factor to pursue in M&A transitions, together with the need to emphasize and find capable and willing human capital, rather than a capital base (equity or debt) and existing values of the acquired brands.

Binary life after the AGB - Towards a unified picture

We attempt to construct a unified evolutionary scheme that includes post-AGB systems, barium stars, symbiotics and related systems, explaining their similarities as well as their differences. Special attention is given to the comparison of the barium pollution and symbiotic phenomena. Finally, we outline a 'transient torus' evolutionary scenario that makes use of the various observational and theoretical hints and aims at explaining the observed characteristics of the relevant systems.

The s-process nucleosynthesis

Theoretical as well as observational aspects of the s-process nucleosynthesis are reviewed. The classical site-independent s-process model as well as the s-process in massive stars are shortly described. A special attention is paid to the nucleosynthesis taking place in AGB stars and the extra-mixing invoked to explain the production of neutrons in the C-rich layers during the interpulse. We also discuss the nucleosynthesis found in hot AGB stars for which the s-process during the interpulse phase is inhibited, but the one resulting from the large temperatures in the thermal pulse is boosted. We comment on the uncertainties affecting our understanding of the physical mechanisms responsible for a successful s-process. Finally, various types of spectroscopic observations of s-process elements are discussed. © 2005 International Astronomical Union.

Fission dynamics for capture reactions in 58,64ni + 208pb systems: New results in terms of thermal energy and neutron multiplicity correlated distributions

The neutron multidetector DéMoN has been used to investigate the symmetric splitting dynamics in the reactions 58.64Ni + 208Pb with excitation energies ranging from 65 to 186 MeV for the composite system. An analysis based on the new backtracing technique has been applied on the neutron data to determine the two-dimensional correlations between the parent composite system initial thermal energy (EthCN) and the total neutron multiplicity (νtot), and between pre- and post-scission neutron multiplicities (νpre and νpost, respectively). The νpre distribution shape indicates the possible coexistence of fast-fission and fusion-fission for the system 58Ni + 208Pb (Ebeam = 8.86 A MeV). The analysis of the neutron multiplicities in the framework of the combined dynamical statistical model (CDSM) gives a reduced friction coefficient β = 23 ± 2512 × 1021 s-1, above the one-body dissipation limit. The corresponding fission time is τf = 40 ± 4620 × 10-21 s. © 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.