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Sanjukta Datta

Photo of Sanjukta Datta

Research student

You can email Sanjukta Datta directly; but for media enquiries please contact a member of The Open University's Media Relations team.

Current research

Market for corporate control and privatised utilities

Privatised utilities in the UK and Europe have been subject to mergers and takeovers in recent years. My research interest is to look into the performance of these utility companies following mergers and takeovers from a strategic and financial perspective. From a strategic perspective my objective will be to examine what new strategies the privatised utilities have adopted following takeovers in order to earn increased market power, increase in revenue either through lowering of costs or increasing prices, overcoming entry barriers, learning and developing new capabilities. This research will help to investigate whether these strategies have helped to increase the performance of the companies. From a financial perspective the aim is to look into the change in the value of the shareholder returns of both the acquirers and the targets following the takeover of these utilities. This will help to show whether there is any synergy gain from these takeovers. Synergy gain takes place when the value of the combined entity exceeds the sum of the values of the two combining firms. This study will provide a useful insight into the effects of mergers and acquisition in utilities sector. This research will also have important policy implication for utilities companies that seek to undertake acquisitions in future.

Supervisors

Publications

Journal papers
Datta, S, Kodwani, D, Viney, H  (2013)  'Shareholder wealth creation following M&A: evidence from European utility sectors', Applied Financial Economics, vol. 23, issue 10, pp. 891-900. Abstract
Daniel, EM, Kodwani, D, Datta, S  (2009)  'The impact of ICT-enabled offshoring announcements on share prices', Journal of Enterprise Information Management, vol. 22, issue 3, pp. 241-256. Abstract
Conference papers
Datta, S, Kodwani, D  (2009)  'M&A in utilities in Europe: testing for agency and hubris hypotheses', ESRC Conference on Corporate Governance and Development, Birmingham Business School.
Datta, S, Kodwani, D, Viney, HP  (2008)  'Market for corporate control and privatised utilities', European Financial Management Association Annual Conference, Athens, Greece.