UCL School of Management Associate Professor Bart Vanneste has recently co-authored a research paper which has been published in SSRN alongside Research Fellow Emil Mirzayev and Marco Testini from the University of Miami’s Herbert Business School.
Entitled ‘Artificial Agents and the Evaluation of M&As’, the paper explores the impact of generative artificial intelligence on mergers and acquisitions (M&As) and their ability to differentiate between value-creating and value-destroying M&As. According to the authors, such deals present opportunities for value creation through synergies, though these can often result in value destruction due to poor managerial foresight and decision-making.
The research paper focuses primarily on the inclusion and impact of incorporating large language models (LLMs) into the merger and acquisition process. LLMs are a form of artificial intelligence that focus on the written word and typically complete tasks involving language generation. In the paper, the co-authors assess anonymised announcements of 109 deals between US public firms and ultimately find that multi-agent systems demonstrate significant potential in enhancing strategic decision-making in mergers and acquisitions.
