scholarly journals Diversified, integrated and cross-border acquisitions and firm performance: A comparison of family and non-family Italian listed firms

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabio La Rosa ◽  
Francesca Bernini ◽  
Giovanna Mariani

In family firms, the principal-agent relationship and the steward role of family managers are determinants for external growth and acquisition target selection. In fact, some acquisitions are better for the family’s need for risk reduction and company preservation. We aim to verify if family involvement in ownership and management influences firms’ acquisition propensity, type of strategy, and post-deal performance. We develop an empirical analysis for a sample of 141 Italian listed companies during 2005–2011, which includes the global financial crisis. Our results reveal that Italian listed family firms have lower acquisition propensity than non-family firms because of family involvement in ownership and executive committees. Especially, diversifying strategies are less pursued by family firms, and this is corroborated when family ownership increases. However, while family firms do not differ from non-family firms on post-acquisition performance, a moderating role of family firms and family ownership does exist for diversified acquisitions and performance.

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 953 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Horobet ◽  
Lucian Belascu ◽  
Ștefania Curea ◽  
Alma Pentescu

Our study addresses the link between ownership concentration and corporate performance in the manufacturing sector in the European Union in an economic environment stressed by the global financial and sovereign debt crises. This is, to our knowledge, the first attempt to tackle differences between companies with different origin-countries in EU from the perspective of ownership concentration and corporate performance in a period marked by the adverse impact of the global financial crisis. Ownership concentration is measured by the number of shareholders and the percentage of their individual and collective holdings, while performance is measured by accounting-based and market-based indicators. Our results, based on a detailed and methodical statistical analysis, show a clear division between Western and Eastern companies in terms of ownership concentration and performance, with an impact on businesses’ recovery patterns. Overall, there is a positive link between ownership concentration and corporate performance in the case of Western companies, but not for Eastern-based companies. Moreover, ownership concentration has supported business recovery in EU, but particularly for Western companies. On the other hand, our results suggest that market investors’ assessment of corporate performance is disconnected from business fundamentals and do not acknowledge the role of ownership concentration (either beneficial of detrimental) for performance assessment.


2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Robinson

Abstract The role of spending review is to identify savings options which enable governments either to find fiscal space for priority new spending, or to cut aggregate spending. Following the surge in the use of spending review by governments around the world following the global financial crisis in 2008, many governments are now seeking to institutionalize spending review as a permanent part of the budget preparation process. The effectiveness of spending review is critically dependent upon the quality of its information base – that is the expenditure analysis and performance indicators which can assist in the search for savings options. Evaluation is an essential part of this information base. However, ensuring that the potential of evaluation to inform spending review is realized will require considerable reflection on the design, selection and conduct of evaluations. Résumé:L’objectif des exercices de révision budgétaire est d’identifier des moyens d’économiser afin que les gouvernements puissent trouver une disponibilité fiscale pour de nouvelles dépenses, ou pour couper les dépenses globales. Suite à l’intérêt pour les exercices de révision budgétaire, au niveau mondial, suivant à la crise financière de 2008, de nombreux gouvernements cherchent à institutionnaliser de façon permanente ces exercice dans le processus de préparation des budgets. L’efficacité des révisions budgétaire repose de façon critique sur la qualité de l’information à laquelle elle a accès – c’est-à-dire l’analyse des dépenses et les indicateurs de performance qui peuvent informer sur les sources potentielles d’économie. L’évaluation est une composante importante de cette information. Toutefois, s’assurer que l’évaluation puissent informer les exercices de révision budgétaire implique une réflexion importante sur la façon dont elles sont conçues, orientées et réalisées. 


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-239
Author(s):  
Yee Peng Chow

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine how business founders influence the performance of family firms in developing countries in Asia. Design/methodology/approach The pooled ordinary least squares regression is used on a sample of 134 public listed family firms from four developing countries in Asia during the period 2004–2014. This study also conducts sub-period analyses where the study period is divided into three sub-periods, i.e. before, during and after the global financial crisis (GFC). Findings This study finds that founder-led family firms outperform family firms led by nonfounders for the full study period. The results for the sub-period analyses also show that founder-led family firms outperform nonfounder-led family firms for the pre-crisis and during crisis periods. Finally, this study finds no evidence supporting the superior performance of founder-led family firms post-GFC. Originality/value Because family firm is one of the most fundamental forms of business organization in the world, policymakers have great concerns about how business founders influence the performance of these firms. Nonetheless, the existing research on family firms is chiefly concentrated on developed countries but there is a paucity of studies being conducted in the context of developing countries. Moreover, previous research has only considered the performance of these firms during normal or turbulent times but no prior studies have compared the firm performance during normal, turbulent and recovery periods. It is the aim of this paper to address these research gaps by using a new and more recent set of data.


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 106-123
Author(s):  
Fabio Franzoi ◽  
Mark Mietzner ◽  
Franziska Thelemann

This study explores the influence of family ownership and family board involvement on earnings management in German-listed firms. We extend existing research by applying a more precise measurement of family involvement that offers new insights into a family’s effect on earnings management behaviour. Our models suggest that the degree of management involvement of families is a significant driver of earnings management, a factor disregarded so far in the literature. Furthermore, the distinction between founding family and family ownership should be carefully considered. Employing a sample of 278 firms from 2000-2013, we find that greater family management presence on the executive board is associated with more earnings-decreasing accrual-based earnings management practices and more real earnings management activities via discretionary expenses. This is viewed as less value-destroying REM activity to meet earning targets. Overall, German family firms seem to use their powerful positions as shareholders and executive board members to expropriate shareholders and manage earnings to meet targets while maintaining family wealth


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Rienda ◽  
Rosario Andreu

Many papers have addressed the influence of different characteristics of family businesses on strategic decisions, including those of internationalisation. However, little is known about the relationship between the internationalization of family firms and firm profitability. For this reason, from the socioemotional wealth perspective, in this paper, we focus on the moderating role of some heterogeneous characteristics of family firms on the relationship between internationalisation and business performance. Specifically, we analyse a sample of 76 companies belonging to the Spanish hotel industry, one of the most internationalised sectors and with a large presence of family businesses. The results show that family involvement in ownership and management, as well as generation, moderates the relationship between internationalisation and profitability in the Spanish hotel industry.


Author(s):  
Irene Spagna

This chapter analyzes the growth of OTC derivatives before the global financial crisis of 2008 and the role of credit default swaps, in particular, in the near collapse of the global economy. It begins by exploring the basic characteristics of derivatives used as risk management instruments by investors to hedge against or exploit the volatility of asset prices. The analysis further reveals that the pre-crisis period was characterized by a broad-based consensus favoring deregulated markets and globally designed private rules. While not always unanimously supported, permissive public regulatory choices were often encouraged by interest group lobbying, the market-friendly views of many domestic authorities, and concerns about regulatory uncertainty and international competitiveness.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vidya Sukumara Panicker ◽  
Rajesh Srinivas Upadhyayula

PurposeThis paper attempts to examine the activity and involvement of board of directors in internationalization activities of firms in emerging markets, by evaluating the resource provisioning roles of interlocks provided by board of directors, and the frequency of board meetings. We demonstrate that the effectiveness of board involvement is contingent upon the levels of family ownership in firms since family ownership could impact the firm’s ability to utilize the presence of different types of board members.Design/methodology/approachThe authors test our hypotheses on a sample of listed Indian companies, extracted from the Prowess database published by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), a database of the financial performance of Indian companies. On a panel of 3,133 firm years of 605 unique Indian firms with foreign investments, over a time period of 2006–2017, the authors apply different estimation techniques.FindingsThe results demonstrate that both board meeting frequency and director interlocks are instrumental in supporting internationalization activities in emerging market firms. However, family ownership moderates the role of insider and independent interlocks on internationalization investments in different ways; the authors find that interlocks provided by independent directors support internationalization activities in family firms, whereas those provided by insider directors do not. Further, the study also finds that board meetings are less effective in internationalization of family firms.Practical implicationsThe authors conclude that family firms aiming at international diversification require to develop more connected and networked independent directors to enable internationalization in firms. While independent director interlocks enhance the international investments, it is also useful to know that board meetings are ineffective in utilizing the resources in family firms. This points to the possibility that family firms should device mechanisms to integrate family meetings with board meetings so that they can utilize the within-family processes to aid in their internationalization decisions.Originality/valueThe study contributes to resource dependence theory by understanding its limiting role in family firms. Theoretically, it helps delineate the limiting resource provision role of the insider directors vis-à-vis independent directors. The authors argue that the resource provision role of insider director interlocks does not effectively help in internationalization in comparison to independent director interlocks in family-dominated firms. Consequently, the study shows the limiting role of resource provision and utilization by family-owned firms in comparison to non-family-owned firms.


2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter L. Molloy ◽  
Lester W. Johnson ◽  
Michael Gilding

A recent study assessed the investor performance of the Australian drug development biotech (DDB) sector over a 15-year period from 2003 to 2018. The current study builds on that research and extends the analysis to 2020, using a 10-year period starting 2010, to exclude the impact of the global financial crisis in 2008/09. Based on a value-weighted portfolio of all 41 DDB firms, the overall sector delivered a negative annualized return of -4.1%. Individual firm performance was also assessed using the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in share price over the period as a measure of investor outcomes. On this basis 68% of firms produced negative CAGRs over the period, and of the 32% of firms that produced positive CAGRs, six firms produced CAGRs greater than 20% per annum and in three cases of recently-listed firms, the CAGR’s were greater than 50%. Overall however, the sector overall delivered very poor investor returns and despite a relatively large number of listed biotech firms, Australian biotechnology continues to be small and weak in terms of its contribution to global biotechnology industrialization. As such it lacks the critical mass to grow a robust bioeconomy based on drug development, which remains the standard-bearer of biotechnology industrialization.


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