This study examines the impact of mergers on the financial performance of the Jordanian public shareholding companies. The study employs data collected for a sample of 10 Jordanian non-financial public firms that were engaged in legal horizontal merger deals between 2000 and 2013. The data was collected from the published annual financial reports of the merging companies and comparative companies for three years before the merger and three years after the merger. Event study methodology was applied to examine the data. Four measures of financial performance (FP) were used, which are return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE), earnings per share (EPS), and net profit margin (NPM). Two methods were used in the analysis – the change model and the intercept model using financial performance raw data and industry-adjusted data. The findings in general showed no significant impact of mergers on the financial performance of merging firms using the change model. However, by using the intercept model, significant impact of mergers on the financial performance was found on the sample of the study. The significant impact was found for mergers on the raw ROE of the merging firms, and on the ROA and NPM of the industry-adjusted firms.

Abstract
1. Introduction
2. Literature Review
3. Research Samples and Methods
    3.1. Data Sample
    3.2. Research Methodology
    3.3. Hypotheses
4. Results and Discussion
5. Conclusions
References

• Maha AYOUSH(Department of Accounting, Faculty of Business, Al-Zaytoonah University of Jordan) Corresponding Author
• Hesham RABAYAH(Department of Civil and Infrastructure Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Technology, Al-Zaytoonah University of Jordan)
• Thaer JIBREEL(Department of Accounting, Faculty of Business, Al-Zaytoonah University of Jordan)