Abstract :
The purpose of this research is to gain empirical evidence whether acquiring
companies conducts earnings management before the execution of merger and acquisition.
It also aims to investigate performance changes of acquiring companies before and after
merger and acquisition.
Earnings management conducted by the companies is proxied by discretionary
accrual (DA) that got from Modified Jones Model approach. With using financial report
data of firms listing in Indonesia Stock Exchange, analysis is done by using independent
sample t-test and paired sample test.
The result shows that there is an indication of earnings management done by taking
over companies before merger and acquisition by utilizing income increasing accruals.
Furthermore, the financial performance of the companies is better but not significant after
merger and acquisition took place.
Keywords: merger, acquisition, earnings management, performance