The New York Stock Exchange-Euronext Merger

New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the European exchange Euronext have merged together recently to form the transatlantic exchange, NYSE-Euronext and they have started trading their shares since April 4th, 2007. Historically, while the exact date in which the investing public knew about this merger decision is unclear, we learn from the NYSE website that on May 22nd, 2006.for the first time NYSE unveiled its $20 billion cash and shares bid for the Euronext We investigate the information content of this merger offer using May 22nd as the event date and measure the presence of any abnormal returns using a sample of thirty six dual listed European companies. We use a standard basic event study methodology and the software program EVENTUS available in Wharton Research Database Services (WRDS). We find no significant abnormal return around the event date. The market seems to have anticipated the announcement.