The “merger scoop” has been a staple of financial journalism for decades. Careers, and even entire business models, have been built around being the first to report that Company Y is buying Company Z. But there is an alternate view that deals scoops are far from the pieces of hard-hitting, journalistic brilliance they are often portrayed to be: In fact they are almost always the result of strategically calibrated leaks in the endgame of a given deal.
What the financial media don’t want you to know: the myth of the merger scoop
By John McDuling