The market for corporate control includes any transaction whereby the control of an asset changes hands. Thus it includes mergers, acquisitions, spin-offs, divestitures, as well as proxy contests.
Mergers are in the news as much as ever.
Benham and Davis author an interesting article from the legal profession on Bidder's Returns and rationale . There are many other academic articles starting with Jensen and Ruback. For a nonacademic view of the current merger wave, read the November 1998 article from the Kansas City Star and Knight-Ridder and an article from the Philadelphia Inquirer . Fortune has an article on 1998 Mergers that Did Not Get Done . It discusses many of the problems that can arise when companies merge.