Globalization and liberalization have ledfirms from emerging markets like India to gain access to new resources and newmarkets. Two of the strategies of this access are mergers and acquisitions asthey increase revenues, reduce costs and make the firms globally competitive. Oflate, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) have grown at a rapid pace, whichcalls for an in-depth research as to what drives firms towards these phenomenaand how it affects them financially. The present monograph presents a research workrelating to the impact of mergers and acquisitions on the returns in short andlong terms. For the purpose, well-established research techniques, namely,event study methodology and two experimental designs, viz., ‘before-and-afterdesign’ and ‘after-only design’ have been used. Besides these techniques, twosurveys have also been conducted for top-level Indian corporate managers of theorganizations that adopted the strategy of M&A. The surveys aim to gaugethe managerial views about the corporate governance practices and the motivesof mergers and acquisitions respectively. The findings of the survey arecorroborated with the secondary data analysis. The notable finding of theresearch is that market starts reacting prior to the announcement. The momentthe information is made public; investors start reacting and the stock pricejumps high, providing positive abnormal returns to the investors. Cross-borderas well as domestic acquisitions have created value for shareholders of theacquirer company on the announcement. The results indicate that value creationis higher for cross-border acquisitions vis-a-vis domestic acquisitions. Theacquisitions financed with cash experience higher returns than the acquisitionsfinanced with stock. The acquirers of unlisted target firms experience higherreturns than the acquirers of listed target firms. The acquirers earn whentarget remains as a wholly owned subsidiary. In contrast, the shareholders ofacquirer lose when the target firm is absorbed with the operations of the acquiringfirm. The acquisitions of targets from non-US developed market outperform thereturn from the acquisition of US targets.