Mergers and acquisitions among the companies in travel and leisure industry is a very common strategy to sustain growth. However, COVID 19 pandemic has impacted the travel industry more than any other disease in the history ever. This paper studies the impact of COVID 19 on the mergers and acquisitions in the travel and tourism sector with reference to the termination of the Ebix Yatra acquisition deal. The outside date of the merger agreement between US based Ebix Inc. and Yatra Online Inc., which was announced on 17^th July 2019, was extended to June 4, 2020 and was terminated by Yatra on June 5, 2020. The paper analyzes the initial impact of the announcement made by US based Ebix Inc. to acquire Yatra Online Inc. on shareholders’ wealth of both the companies and the impact on the shareholders’ wealth when the deal was announced to be terminated. Event Study methodology has been followed and market model has been used in our study to calculate the expected and the abnormal return of the shareholders of the acquiring company (Ebix Inc.) and the acquired company (Yatra Online Inc.). The results indicate the initial announcement of merger had not resulted in any significant change in the shareholders wealth of Ebix, but the shareholders of Yatra assumed significant positive abnormal return in the very short periods of 5 day (-2, +2), 6 days (-2,+3) and 7 days (-3,+3) around the event window. However, on the news of termination of the deal, none of the shareholders’ of Yatra or Ebix witnessed significant positive or negative cumulative abnormal return around any of the event windows, showing no significant change in shareholders’ wealth on merger termination news.

KEYWORDS: Covid 19 impact on M&A in Travel Sector, Ebix Inc., Yatra Online, Shareholders’ Wealth.