FISV - Don't Play The Fiserv-First Data Corp. Merger Arbitrage
The all-stock merger announced on Jan. 17, 2019, between Fiserv, Inc. (FISV) and First Data Corp. (FDC) is not a good arbitrage play, at least at this point.
Every shareholder of FDC will receive exactly 0.303 shares of FISV when the deal closes. That is the exchange ratio.
So we can calculate the expected return if one were to buy the shares of FDC now (as of the close of Friday Jan. 18, 2019) and hope to receive a reasonable profit when the shares of FISV are later received upon the