A Re-Examination of the Conglomerate Merger Wave in the 1960s: An Internal Capital Markets View
31 Pages Posted: 6 Jul 2000 Last revised: 16 May 2021
Date Written: April 1998
Abstract
One possible explanation that bidding firms earned positive abnormal returns in diversifying acquisitions in the 1960s is that internal capital markets were expected to overcome the information deficiencies of the less developed capital markets. Examining 392 bidder firms during the 1960s, we find the highest bidder returns when financially unconstrained' buyers acquire constrained' targets. This result holds while controlling for merger terms and for different proxies used to classify firms facing costly external financing. We also find that bidders generally retain target management, suggesting that management may have provided company-specific operational information, while the bidder provided capital-budgeting expertise.
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
Paper statistics
Recommended Papers
-
Tobin's Q, Corporate Diversification and Firm Performance
By Larry H.p. Lang and René M. Stulz
-
The Cost of Diversity: The Diversification Discount and Inefficient Investment
By Raghuram G. Rajan, Henri Servaes, ...
-
The Cost of Diversity: The Diversification Discount and Inefficient Investment
By Raghuram G. Rajan, Henri Servaes, ...
-
Cash Flow and Investment: Evidence from Internal Capital Markets
-
The Dark Side of Internal Capital Markets: Divisional Rent-Seeking and Inefficient Investment
-
Internal Capital Markets and the Competition for Corporate Resources
-
Explaining the Diversification Discount
By José Manuel Campa and Simi Kedia
-
Explaining the Diversification Discount
By José Manuel Campa and Simi Kedia