Finance Ph.D. candidate explains his journey at WSU
The Wayne State University School of Business Administration offers doctoral programs in three areas: management, marketing and finance. There are five students in the finance doctoral program, including two who will graduate next May.
Chenguang Shang is one of those May graduates. Shang said he has enjoyed his time in the finance program and that the culturally and ethnically diverse environment attracted him to WSU’s Ph.D. program.
Shang has taken seminar classes from Sudip Datta, interim chair of the Department of Finance; Ranjan D’Mello, associate professor of finance; Jia Hao, assistant professor of finance; Mai Iskandar-Datta, professor of finance; and Mbodja Mougoué, associate professor of finance.
"I am very grateful for their help. Whether it’s specifically related to finance or something else entirely, the faculty members are always willing to help," he said.
Shang said he feels fortunate to be in the same program with friends and fellow finance doctoral students Matt Ross and Norkeith Smith. He said they have been helping and supporting each other through this rigorous program.
Shang’s dissertation, titled "Deal Innovations in Mergers and Acquisitions: Do Go-Shop Provisions Create Real Benefits?" examines the effects of go-shop provisions in merger agreements. Go-shop provisions allow public companies to seek out competing offers when they are being sold.
"I found that go-shop provisions are associated with higher deal synergies and have a higher positive wealth effect on targets than no-shop deals. In addition, go-shop provisions have a significant impact on the behavior of initial bidders," he said.
"Specifically, the go-shop provision pressures the initial bidder to raise the original offer price during the go-shop period."
The results in his dissertation suggest that go-shop provisions are an effective market canvas alternative to public auctions.
"Go-shop provisions have become increasingly popular in M&A [mergers and acquisitions] transactions in recent years; however, there are very few studies empirically examining the effects of this new deal innovation," he said.
Shang said he received an enormous amount of help with his research and job hunting from Datta and Iskandar-Datta.
"Both of them have an excellent track record in research and working with Ph.D. students to get them published in high-quality journals. I am especially indebted to my dissertation committee chair, Dr. Sudip Datta for all his encouragement and support," Shang said. "He has high standards for quality of research and shares his experience with me without any reservation. He keeps reminding me of the importance of quality over quantity."
