Amir Amel-Zadeh is Associate Professor of Accounting at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, and Associate Member of the Oxford-Man Institute of Quantitative Finance. Prior to joining Saïd Business School, Amir held a faculty position at Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, and prior to that worked at Lehman Brothers in London. He received his PhD and MPhil in finance from the University of Cambridge. He has been visiting scholar at Harvard Business School, at New York University Stern School of Business, and at Columbia Business School. His research examines the economic consequences of voluntary and mandatory corporate reporting, particularly during major corporate events such as M&A.

Geoff Meeks is Emeritus Professor and Honorary Director of Research at University of Cambridge, Judge Business School. He has held positions at the University of Edinburgh, Price Waterhouse, the Cambridge Economics Faculty and Cambridge Judge Business School, where he served inter alia as Acting Dean; he has been visiting scholar at Harvard Business School, INSEAD and London School of Economics. His publications are mainly in accounting, economics, and finance and concentrate particularly on M&A, insolvency, and accounting procedures.

1 Introduction PART I Accounting procedures 2 An outline of issues in accounting for M&A 3 Seventy years of accounting standards for M&A 4 Developing new accounting standards for M&A: a standard-setters' perspective 5 Stewardship and value-relevance in accounting for the depletion of purchased goodwill PART II Managing perceptions of performance around M&A 6 Stock prices and earnings management around M&A transactions 7 Earnings forecasts accompanying a bid 8 Managing earnings through M&A PART III Using accounts to measure the impact of M&A on performance 9 Measuring post-acquisition performance: introduction 10 An early attempt to use accounting data to estimate the impact of M&A on financial performance 11 The impact of M&A on performance: alternative measures of rates of profit 12 Operating performance improvements after corporate takeovers: fact or fallacy? 13 The financial performance of acquired companies in the Chinese stock market PART IV Concluding remarks 14 Continuing challenges in accounting for M&A