并购传闻如何不胫而走
Jen Wieczner | 2014-08-29 16:13
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[译文]
“传染”系列文章：
【传染之一】比SARS更致命：蝙蝠病毒MERS是如何成为人类杀手的
【传染之五】从贾斯汀•比伯到数据学家，Twitter何以成为一门显学
Leigh Drogen remembers exactly how he first heard that Radware was going to be acquired.
At the time, Drogen was running a hedge fund of momentum stocks, and he’d been watching Radware, an Israel-based Internet security firm listed in the U.S. “Everything lined up for me that I should be owning this company, but I hadn’t pulled the trigger yet,” he remembers. Then on Twitter, a respected trader Drogen follows tweeted that a slew of options trades on Radware stock—bets that its shares would rise—had just been made. The trader’s conclusion: The company was definitely a takeover target. “That was the thing that put me over the edge,” says Drogen, who quickly loaded up on Radware shares.
Within a week, Wall Street was abuzz with acquisition rumors: Analysts had labeled Radware an attractive target, and an Israeli newspaper, citing anonymous sources, reported that the company was considering a nearly $1 billion offer from IBM or Hewlett-Packard . The story was picked up by American blogs and news outlets, sending Radware’s stock through the roof. “It seemed real,” Drogen recalls.
The deal never materialized, but that didn’t matter to Drogen, who was already long gone by the time the dust settled—taking a handsome profit with him. “If one of your stocks goes up 40% in one day on a rumor, you get rid of it,” he says. “You don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.”
It’s a classic example of the power that gossip wields in the market—and the potential rewards for those who play the right rumor before everybody else catches wind of it. The chance to capitalize on such speculation is hard to resist, even for professional investors who swear that they would never trade on anything so flimsy as a rumor (including every portfolio manager Fortune interviewed for this story). It’s their job, after all, to look out for anything that could impact a stock—and mergers and acquisitions, even rumored ones, can sway stock prices more dramatically than most other events.
Sometimes, when M&A speculation catches on, it becomes so contagious it spreads to the market itself, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy—moving prices as though a deal had just been announced.
In a new Fortune series on Contagion, my colleagues and I set out to explore this phenomenon—from the classically (and fatally) contagious MERS-coV virus (here and here) to more figuratively viral manifestations like stock market selloffs, runaway bestsellers and even the advent of “the selfie.”
With M&A rumors, the contagion effect is obvious, but the mechanics behind it are a complete mystery to many market experts. We know that stock-related rumors are an almost daily part of the trading life. Much less clear is why certain bits of gossip—including some that seem to have little substance at all—catch a wave of trader attention.
“Certainly, rumors move the market,” says Mark Landy, a medical technology stock analyst with Summer Street Research Partners, who has vetted his fair share of M&A gossip. “You have people who invest in the market and people who gamble in the market—and honestly sometimes, the gambling portion of the investment community gives the investment part an opportunity.” There’s even an old investing saying, Landy reminds us: “You buy the rumor and you sell the news.”
利•德罗根对自己首次听说以色列互联网安全公司Radware将被收购时的情形记忆犹新。
当时，德罗根正管理着一只动力股对冲基金，而且一直在观察在美国上市的Radware。他回忆道：“我掌握的所有情况都表明我应该持有这只股票，只是当时我还没有动手。”随后，德罗根关注的一位颇有声望的交易员在Twitter上罗列了一大堆自己对这只股票的看法，而且预计Radware的股价将上涨。这位交易员的结论是，Radware一定是别人的收购目标。德罗根说：“就是这句话让我从观望变为行动。”随后，德罗根开始迅速吸纳Radware的股票。
收购传闻在一周内传遍了华尔街。分析师都把Radware列为有吸引力的个股。一家以色列报纸还引述未具名消息人士的话说，IBM和惠普（Hewlett-Packard）提出以近10亿美元的价格收购Radware，而后者正在考虑此事。美国各家网站和新闻媒体纷纷转载这篇报道，Radware的股价也因此大涨特涨。德罗根说：“当时这看来是真的。”
这次收购一直没有付诸实施。但对德罗根来说，这没有关系——尘埃落定时他早已抽身离去，而且获利不菲。他说：“如果你手里的某只股票因为传闻在一天内上涨了40%，那就要把它卖掉。对唾手而得的收获不能要求太多。”
从这个典型事例中可以看出传闻对市场的影响力。它也表明，在别人收到风声前对恰当的传闻加以利用可能得到怎样的回报。借此类炒作赚钱的机会往往让人很难抗拒，就连职业投资者也是如此，尽管他们，包括《财富》（Fortune）杂志撰写本文时采访的所有证券投资经理，发誓说自己绝不会把传闻这种如此不靠谱的东西作为交易依据。毕竟，他们的工作就是关注所有可能影响股票的东西。而和大多数其他因素相比，并购，甚至是并购传闻，能让股价出现更大的起伏。
有时候，并购传闻犹如瘟疫一般在市场上到处传播，最终成为一个自我实现的预言，它对股价的影响就好像相关公告刚刚发布一样。
在《财富》杂志以传染为主题的系列文章中，我和同事们将对这个现象进行探究。这个题目既会覆盖典型（而且致命）的“传染性冠状病毒”，也会囊括象征意味更浓的“病毒性症状”，比如股市出现抛售潮，大卖特卖的最畅销书籍，乃至“自拍”的流行。
并购传闻的传播效果很明显，但对许多市场专家来说，这背后的机制仍然完全是个谜。我们知道，和股票有关的传闻差不多就是交易员日常生活的一部分。但只有一部分传闻引起交易员的广泛关注，其中甚至包括一些看起来根本没有什么依据的传闻，为什么会出现这样的情况还远远没有解释清楚。
股票研究和交易机构Summer Street Research Partners医药科技股分析师马克•兰迪研究了大量并购传闻。他指出：“传闻当然会影响市场。有人在市场上投资，有人在市场上投机——老实说，有时候投机的那部分人给投资的人带来了机会。”兰迪还提醒我们：“投资领域甚至有句老话，出现传闻时买入，传闻兑现时卖出。”
Indeed, rumors frequently swirl not because something is going to happen, but rather because people think it will…or should. Investors watch for the same signals of potential deals, analyzing certain financial and economic measures associated with acquisitions, and listening for hints of M&A interest from CEOs and CFOs. Bloomberg terminals—on the desks of most pro investors and traders—keep a running list of “potential global takeover targets” that currently number more than 3,300.
Barrow Street Advisors, an investment firm that has switched its focus from private equity to mutual funds, points out that 60 of its portfolio holdings have been acquired since 2009—a full 6% of the 987 U.S. companies that were actually acquired during the period, which is more than triple the acquisition rate for the market as a whole. “And that’s without going to the rumor mill for ideas,” boasts David Bechtel, a principal at Barrow, saying that his firm looks for companies with the same characteristics that buyout firms would find attractive.
When the right factors are present, though, investors will believe almost any whisper of a deal—and when someone begins trading on that belief, it strengthens the belief of others, who often start trading, too, juicing the stocks and lighting up the options market. “At the end of the day, if there is a rumor, and there is credibility—and there’s action in the stock market that points in the direction of the rumor—that’s something that a lot of people would pay attention to,” says Scott Wallace, a former Alliance Bernstein portfolio manager who recently launched a hedge fund firm in Chicago, Shorepath Capital Management. “What makes a good rumor is a lot of people believe it. And if the stock’s moving on it, then maybe they know something I don’t know.”
A well-kept Wall Street secret, say veteran investors, is that professional traders bounce ideas off each other much more often than their compliance departments would allow. The exchanges are typically behind the scenes, when they run into each other at shareholder meetings, or chat over the phone or in online forums.
“With social media, you don’t have to have friends in high places to see what people are thinking,” Landy says. “And that can be spread wild and fast.” Landy has seen this firsthand—when he speculated in an analyst commentary that a certain company could be a takeover candidate. His gentle musing snowballed into the company being labeled a target all over the web, bumping up the stock’s price.
Of course, problems arise when investors share not a mere hypothesis, but rather confidential intel about a future M&A deal. Acting on such non-public information is known as insider trading, and it’s illegal.
But often, rumors begin to circulate because investors are looking for feedback on a particular M&A theory—or wishful thinkers (say, shareholders and investment bankers) perpetuate them. Or because it’s just fun to make predictions, as Fortune learned when, in our January issue, we took odds on potential mergers between AT&T and Vodafone , and Amazon and the United States Postal Service.
Take, for example, Howard Lindzon, the founder of StockTwits, the site dedicated to sharing stock ideas in 140-character posts—many of which include potential M&A candidates, he says. “I do it. I’ll speculate on my stream, ‘Wouldn’t it make sense if Twitter bought this company, or that company bought this one?’” Lindzon says. “It’s not insider trading; it’s just sharing an idea. Just to see if somebody else is thinking the same thing.”
的确，传闻经常引起波澜的原因并不是要发生什么事，而是人们认为将要发生，或者应该发生什么事。投资者同样关注这些潜在并购信号，分析某些和并购有关的金融和经济指标，仔细聆听首席执行官和首席财务官的并购兴趣，以寻找蛛丝马迹。摆放在大多数职业投资者和交易员案头的彭博（Bloomberg）终端不停地滚动着一份“全球潜在收购目标”名单。目前，这份名单上的公司已经超过3300家。
投资公司Barrow Street Advisors已将其注意力从私募股权转向共同基金。该公司指出，2009年以来，真正被收购的美国公司有987家，而它持有其中60家公司的股份，占了整整6%，是整个市场平均水平的三倍以上。该公司主管大卫•贝克特尔说：“我们当然不会从传闻中寻找思路。”他指出，该公司寻找的投资对象都有让收购方感兴趣的特点。
不过，条件恰当时，投资者几乎会相信任何跟并购有关的消息——当有人抱着这份信心开始交易时，其他人也会更加相信这个消息，并且也会开始进行同样的交易，从而让相关股票变得诱人，也让期权市场变得热闹起来。联博资产管理公司（Alliance Bernstein）前证券投资经理斯科特•华莱土最近在芝加哥成立了对冲基金公司Shorepath Capital Management。他说：“最终，如果出现了传闻，就会有人觉得可信，随后就会有人在股市里采取和传闻所指方向一致的行动，这就会引起很多人的注意。有许多人相信的传闻就是好传闻。如果相关股票随之而动，那就可能意味着别人掌握了我不知道的信息。”
投资老手都说，华尔街妥善地隐藏着一个秘密，那就是专业交易员相互交换想法的频繁程度远远超过了合规部门允许的水平。当这些交易员在股东大会上见面，相互打电话，或者通过网络论坛进行交流时，交易所一般都被蒙在鼓里。
兰迪说：“有了社交媒体，你就不必再通过高层中的朋友来了解人们的想法了。这些消息会迅速而广泛地传播开来。”他曾目睹这种情况——他在一篇分析师评论中猜测某家公司可能成为别人收购的对象。几经加工后，他的保守猜想让整个网络都把这家公司视为收购目标，后者的股价因此大幅上涨。
当然，如果投资者分享的不仅仅是个假设，而是有关未来并购的机密信息，就会出现问题。基于这样的非公开信息采取行动叫做内幕交易，这是违法行为。
不过，传闻开始四处流传的原因往往是投资者就某个特定并购思路寻找反馈意见，或者一些打着如意算盘的人（比如股东和投行人士）有意延续这些传闻；又或者做预测就是那么有意思，就像《财富》杂志在今年1月刊中体会到的那样——当时《财富》正在猜测美国电话电报（AT&T）和沃达丰（Vodafone）以及亚马逊（Amazon）和美国邮政（United States Postal Service）会不会合并。
以StockTwits为例，这家网站专门通过最多140个字符的帖子共享股市投资思路，其中许多帖子都涉及潜在并购对象。该网站创始人霍华德•林德扎说：“我就是这么做的。我会思考‘Twitter收购这家公司，或者那家公司买下这家公司是否合理？’这可不是内幕交易，这只是分享一个想法，看看是不是有人也这样想。”
In April, Lindzon even dragged venture capitalist Marc Andreessen into the rumor mill, asking him in a Twitter chat, if he were CEO of Apple , which companies would he buy? Andreessen took the bait, naming Twitter and Dropbox as good candidates. Meanwhile, myriad followers responded with their own suggestions for deals, such as Microsoft acquiring Dropbox instead. The StockTwits founder, meanwhile, had his own ideas about a Microsoft target: “They will probably buy Box. Feels that way to me based on Levie tweets,” Lindzon chimed in, referring to Box CEO Aaron Levie.
And so the rumor mill churns.
No one knows this better than Drogen, who left the hedge fund world to found a tech startup, Estimize, which allows market watchers to predict financial results for companies. In March, Estimize launched Mergerize.com, for people to post their guesses about future M&A deals. Drogen says the idea came from several large hedge funds, who wanted to keep tabs on theories floating around the market.
“They already call each other all the time, but in an official way they could never do that,” Drogen says, adding that major hedge fund analysts and investors are participating on Mergerize, but are using pseudonyms instead of their real names. “That’s why the Street is such a herding mentality, because everybody’s paying attention to what everybody else thinks, because they need to understand when they’re out of consensus.”
So far, one Mergerize member’s prediction has even come true. AnandThaker, a marketing technology and operations consultant in the Atlanta area, predicted on March 26 that IBM would acquire Atlanta-based marketing startup Silverpop within three months, just two weeks before the deal was announced. Thaker says he closely follows and analyzes companies within the industry, including Silverpop.
His post came a day after an Atlanta business journal reported on the negotiations, citing anonymous sources, but that report did not make national news. The investment news site 24/7 Wall St., which has a section entitled “Rumors,” noted that IBM rose nearly 4% that day, with roughly double its normal trading volume, despite the fact that “the company had no big news” to report. (“There are other such accurate—and inaccurate—predictions, so when Mergerize emerged, I thought I’d post one of those predictions,” Thaker says.)
At least as often, however, M&A rumors lead investors astray when they turn out not to be true. The anonymous messaging app Secret gained notoriety this year when people used it to share false acquisition news. Some investors suspect that companies themselves plant rumors about M&A they’re considering in order to get the market’s feedback, or that investment bankers leak “intel” to pressure companies to close a deal. Drogen, for one, says he has been fielding calls from certain high-profile investor relations departments regarding takeover targets predicted on Mergerize.
“The game of telephone that takes place with these things is crazy,” says Drogen, listing examples: “How many times has RadioShack been expected to get taken over for their real estate value? Or that Microsoft is buying BlackBerry ? That rumor is always going around and it’s always the bankers who want the deal to happen. It’s basically like, ‘Somebody please bid!’”
4月份，林德扎甚至把风投家马克•安德森扯了进来。他在Twitter上问，如果安德森是苹果公司（Apple）CEO，他会收购哪家公司？安德森接了招，说Twitter和Dropbox都是理想的收购对象。随后，大量跟帖者都提出了自己的建议，比如微软（Microsoft）本该收购云存储服务商Dropbox。对于微软的收购目标，林德扎有自己的看法：“他们很可能收购Dropbox的同行Box。这个感受是我根据对Box公司CEO阿伦•利维Twitter留言的观察得来的。”
就这样，传闻不断地出现。
对此最为熟悉的莫过于德罗根。他离开了对冲基金行业，转而建立了一家科技初创公司Estimize，市场观察人士可以通过它来预测公司业绩。3月份，Estimize的网站Mergerize.com上线，人们可以在这里发帖，推测今后可能出现的并购。德罗根说，这个想法来自几只大型对冲基金，它们希望不断了解市场上流行的思路。
德罗根说：“他们一直在相互联系，但绝对不能通过正式途径。”他指出，大型对冲基金的分析师和投资者都在Mergerize.com注了册，但使用的是昵称，而非真实姓名：“这就是华尔街上从众心态如此严重的原因，因为所有人都在关注别人有什么想法，他们需要知道自己是否和市场共识脱节了。”
到目前为止，人们在Mergerize.com上的预测兑现了一条。亚特兰大地区营销技术和经营顾问阿南德•塔克尔在3月26日预计，IBM将在3个月内收购设在亚特兰大的营销初创公司Silverpop，只比正式公告早了两周。塔克尔说，他一直在密切追踪和分析这个行业的公司，包括Silverpop。
塔克尔发帖前一天，亚特兰大一家商业期刊引述未具名消息人士的话报道称，IBM和Silverpop正在商讨收购事项，但这篇报道并未在整个美国引起关注。设有“传闻”板块的投资新闻网站24/7 Wall St.指出，尽管“IBM没有重大消息”可以披露，但当天IBM的股价上涨了近4%，而且成交量几乎翻番（塔克尔说：“像这样的准确和不准确预测一直都有，所以当Mergerize.com出现时，我觉得自己应该在那上面发帖预测一下。”）。
不过，当并购传闻被证伪的时候，它们往往会让投资者步入歧途。匿名通信软件Secret今年背上了恶名，原因是有人用它发布虚假并购消息。有些投资者怀疑，相关公司针对自己正在考虑的并购自行制造了传闻，目的是获得市场反馈，或者投行人士通过放出“内部消息”来迫使相关公司完成并购。举例来说，德罗根指出，某些知名公司的投资者关系部门一直在给他打电话，内容都和人们在Mergerize.com上预测的并购目标有关。
德罗根说：“这种电话游戏非常疯狂。”他罗列了一些例子：“市场有多少次预测拥有高价值房地产资产的电子产品零售商RadioShack将被收购？有多少次人们预测微软将收购黑莓（BlackBerry）？总是有这样的传闻，而希望它们变为现实总是那些投行人士。他们几乎就像是在说‘请采取行动吧！’”
Many investors learned this the hard way earlier this summer, when Minneapolis-based medical device maker Medtronic announced in mid-June that it would buy its Irish competitor Covidienfor $43 billion. For weeks, analysts from London to New York had been speculating that Medtronic had been shopping in Europe, looking to merge with a company there to secure a lower tax rate, as several other U.S. health care companies had recently done.
For analysts reading between the lines, it was just a matter of who Medtronic would buy. Covidien, though, had never been part of the chain of rumors. By June 4, there were whispers that Medtronic would acquire British artificial joint manufacturer Smith &Nephew , whose shares rose 12% on the media reports. Landy, the Summer Street analyst, raised his price target for Smith & Nephew, and concedes that he helped perpetuate the theory when reporters called him. “When the Medtronic rumor broke, I said that makes good sense,” Landy says, “because to me, Smith & Nephew was a viable target for Medtronic.”
When the actual target—Covidien—was announced, few rumor-mongers publicly admitted their mistake. Instead, investors and analysts began churning the rumor mill anew, speculating that other industry players, such as Johnson & Johnson and Stryker , might launch bids of their own.
In the spirit of keeping the gossip going, several investors shared their own takeover theories with Fortune. Drogen agreed with one Mergerize prediction that Apple would buy GoPro, and interpreted a Twitter post about heavy options trading on Joy Global as a sign that the Milwaukee mining-equipment company might soon be acquired. Shortly after, Joy Global shares surged 8% in a single day. The reason? What else? Acquisition rumors.
Wallace says he’s been watching Broadcom , a semiconductor company that is planning to sell off one of its underperforming units: “Once they get rid of that,” he says, “the rest of the business would make for a nice consolidation opportunity for somebody to buy….” Let the speculation begin.
今年夏初，许多投资者在这方面吃了大亏。6月中旬，总部位于明尼阿波利斯的医疗器械制造商Medtronic发布公告称，该公司将斥资430亿美元收购爱尔兰竞争对手Covidien。几周来，伦敦和纽约等地的分析师一直觉得Medtronic正在欧洲挑选收购对象，目的是通过和当地公司合并来降低税率，就像其他几家美国医疗保健企业最近所做的那样。
有些分析师从字里行间看出，这只是Medtronic将收购谁的问题。而Covidien一直都没有参与到这个“传闻链”中。6月4日，有消息称Medtronic将收购英国人工关节制造商Smith & Nephew。相关媒体报道让Smith & Nephew的股价上涨了12%。Summer Street Research Partners分析师兰迪上调了Smith & Nephew的目标价。兰迪承认，接受记者采访时，自己让这条消息变得更加可信。兰迪说：“有关Medtronic的传闻出现时，我说这很合情合理，原因是在我看来，Smith & Nephew对Medtronic来说是个切实的收购目标。”
当Covidien披露真正的收购目标后，几乎没有哪个兜售传闻的人公开承认了自己的错误。相反，投资者和分析师开始再次酝酿传闻，他们猜想这个行业中的其他公司，比如强生（Johnson & Johnson）和史塞克公司（Stryker）也可能发起收购。
本着让传闻延续下去的精神，几名投资者向《财富》透露了他们在并购方面的预期。有人在Mergerize.com上预测苹果公司将收购照相机厂商GoPro；还有人将一个关于Joy Global公司成为大宗期权交易对象的Twitter帖子解读为，这家设在密尔沃基州的采矿设备公司可能被收购，德罗根对此表示赞同。
华莱士说，他一直在关注半导体公司博通（Broadcom），后者正计划剥离那些表现不够理想的业务，“摆脱这些业务后，博通就会成为一个良好的收购整合机会……”开始猜吧。（财富中文网）
译者：Charlie
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