Can Private Equity Funds Act as Strategic Buyers? Evidence from Buy-and-Build Strategies
Tinbergen Institute Discussion Paper 2020-041/IV
64 Pages Posted: 5 Aug 2020
There are 2 versions of this paper
Can Private Equity Funds Act as Strategic Buyers? Evidence from Buy-and-Build Strategies
Date Written: July 7, 2020
Abstract
By holding assets longer and increasingly focusing on growth strategies private equity firms enter the territory of strategic buyers. In one such strategy, a private equity firm buys a company and then builds on that “platform” through add-on acquisitions. We ask whether such serial (buy-and-build) acquisition strategies deliver operating synergies, as expected from strategic buyers, or rather are a form of “window-dressing.” We collect a sample of buy-and-build strategies from seven major European markets and find that the profitability of these strategies improves more than that of the comparable strategies, constructed by us from stand-alone companies. We analyze a number of operating outcomes across various strategy sub-types and confirm that these operational improvements are consistent with the synergy interpretation.
Keywords: Private Equity, Leveraged Buyouts, Buy-and-Build, Operating Performance, Synergies
JEL Classification: L2, G24, G34
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation