Downloading historical stock prices of companies involved in mergers and acquisitions transactions
You can use the Idea Screening application
From Factset main page, type “Idea Screening” in the search box on the top, and click the first result:
The Idea Screening is a tool that allows you to find lists of companies, transactions, buyers and advisors with specific characteristics.
To search M&A click “Start this screen” next to “M&A” in the section “Transactions”.
You can apply several filters to identify the most relevant deals.
Let’s perform a sample search:
We want to find all the deals with a value greater than 100 million USD dollars, completed between 1st of January 2015 and 1st of January 2021, where a U.S. listed company (Acquiror) acquired a European company (Target).
View the results:
To get all the information on a specific transaction, click the target name and then “Deal Snapshot”.
Click “Source” to see the original document that contains information on the deal:
From the list of results you can:
If you need to download the stock prices of the companies involved in the transactions, we suggest you to add the ticker symbol.
Now you can either download your results by clicking the green row icon or save your query by clicking the floppy icon:
Now to download the stock prices of the acquirors from the announcement date to one year afterwards, use the Office 365 add-in Factset. Open a new Excel spreadsheet from Microsoft Office (Sharepoint, Teams?) and copy and paste the “Announcement Date” and “Acquirer Ticker” columns of the M&A results.
Also add a column providing the exact end date, move to an empty cell, then open Factset add-in and click “Insert Formula”. Login if requested.
Fill the Insert Formula screen:
In the first box “Enter identifier” click “Cell Reference Picker” to select the first Acquirer Ticker;
In the second box “Begin typing to search for a formula” type what you need (in our example: “price” and choose “P_Price”);
Use “Start Date” and “End Date” Cell Reference Picker to select the Announcement Date and End Date in your Excel spreadsheet;
Select “Daily” from the “Frequency” drop-down menu;
Click the arrow next to “Insert” to choose the display options;
Click “Insert”
Scroll down and click “Refresh”, then “Worksheet”, to populate your Excel spreadsheet:
Be careful! These instructions will work only if there is a single code in each cell of your acquiror ticker list. If multiple codes are displayed in the same cell, modify the list manually or with the Excel function “Text to columns”:
