Mergers and P/E Ratios. Castles in the Sand currently sells at a price-earnings multiple of 10. The firm has 2 million shares outstanding, and sells at a price per share of $40. Firm Foundation has a P/E multiple of 8, has 1 million shares outstanding, and sells at a price per share of $20.

a. If Castles acquires the other firm by exchanging one of its shares for every two of Firm Foundation’s, what will be the earnings per share of the merged firm?

b. What should be the P/E of the new firm if the merger has no economic gains? What will happen to Castles’s price per share? Show that shareholders of neither Castles nor Firm Foundation realize any change in wealth.

c. What will happen to Castles’s price per share if the market does not realize that the P/E ratio of the merged firm ought to differ from Castles’s premerger ratio?

d. How are the gains from the merger split between shareholders of the two firms if the market is fooled as in part (c)?