Foreign and Domestic Takeovers in Germany: Cherry-picking and Lemon-grabbing

This study focuses on ex ante performance of domestic and foreign takeover targets in Germany, one of the most important FDI inflow destinations worldwide. Using a new database from German official statistics, unconditional comparisons as well as binary response model estimations of takeover probabilities were performed for the manufacturing and service sector separately. The results showed a diametrically opposing impact of productivity and profitability on the takeover likelihood. This offers a conciliation of two supposedly opponent hypotheses, known as ‘cherry-picking’ and ‘lemon-grabbing’. The results advocate assumptions of asset-exploiting and information asymmetries in favor of domestic investors but differ only marginally between foreign and domestic targets.