Managing Climate Change Risks: Sea-Level Rise and Mergers and Acquisitions

Using a large sample over the period 1986 to 2017, we show that companies with higher exposure to climate change risk induced by sea-level rise (SLR) tend to acquire firms that are unlikely to be directly affected by SLR. We find that acquirers with higher SLR exposure experience significantly higher announcement-period abnormal stock returns. Analyses using failed merger bids as an exogenous shock show that post-merger, analyst forecasts become more accurate and environmental-related as well as overall ESG scores improve.