Basic Technical Investment Banking Practice Test

The main idea here is that the most direct way to gauge how a merger affects shareholders is earnings per share. EPS shows how much profit is attributable to each share after the deal, incorporating both the combined earnings and any dilution from new shares or other adjustments in share count. By comparing the pro forma EPS after the merger to the stand-alone EPS before it, you can tell if the deal is accretive (increases EPS) or dilutive (reduces EPS) for shareholders. If the post-deal EPS is higher, that indicates a favorable outcome for shareholders on a per-share basis. Revenue growth, market capitalization, and debt ratio matter for overall value and risk, but they don’t directly measure how the deal changes earnings available to each share, which is why EPS is the best answer for evaluating shareholder benefit in a merger model.