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Comment by Karellen | Hacker News Reader

I... what?

Great-Grandparent> most M&A transactions trend to have a 30% premium above the trading price. I [...] could not find a good explanation to why

You> It’s probably just a good rule of thumb.

Me> But why is 30% better than 15%?

You> The equilibrium appears to be 30% above asking

I still don't understand how that's supposed to explain why 30% is the stable value, instead of another, as the GGP was asking. How does what you are saying add anything more than "It is what it is" to the discussion?

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The point poorly expressed is that public markets transactions are highly scrutinised, and it is easy for shareholders to be highly litigious toward the directors.

The directors therefore have a strong incentive to only accept offers at a normal premium to current price, which seems to be about 30% by back of the cigarette packet maths.

Bidders therefore have an incentive to bid around 30% so their bids are more likely to be accepted.

The key thing is an incentive to avoid liability and get deals done. If the equilibrium was 80% then bids would be all at 80% and there would be less of them.

unrelated, i'm trying to figure out where the phrase "back of the cigarette packet math" is more common than saying "back of the napkin math".

Sometimes complicated dynamical systems have equilibria that just are without a known reason. I can see that once 30% gained a bit of traction is just coalesced into an equilibrium. The common decision making analysis of just looking at what others have done and basing your decisions on that mean that things evolve to wherever “monkey see, monkey do” gains traction.

Not every number has to be derivable through some kind of formula. Realtors tend to take 6% as their commission. Why not 6.5%? or 5%? The answer is that sometimes they do, but it's just traditionally by default 6% unless one or more parties chooses to negotiate it. There's no math.

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