Corporate Acquisitions, Diversification, and the Firm's Lifecycle

Asli M. Arikan and René Stulz

No 17463, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Lifecycle theories of mergers and diversification predict that firms make acquisitions and diversify when their internal growth opportunities become exhausted. Free cash flow theories make similar predictions. In contrast to these theories, we find that the acquisition rate of firms (defined as the number of acquisitions in an IPO cohort-year divided by the number of firms in that cohort-year) follows a u-shape through their lifecycle as public firms, with young and mature firms being equally acquisitive but more so than middle-aged firms. Firms that go public during the merger/IPO wave of the 1990s are significantly more acquisitive early in their public life than firms that go public at other times. Young public firms have a lower acquisition rate of public firms than mature firms, but the opposite is true for acquisitions of private firms and subsidiaries. Strikingly, firms diversify early in their life and there is a 41% chance that a firm's first acquisition is a diversifying acquisition. The stock market reacts more favorably to acquisitions by young firms than to acquisitions by mature firms except for acquisitions of public firms paid for with stock. There is no evidence that the market reacts more adversely to diversifying acquisitions by young firms than to other acquisitions.

JEL-codes: G3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec and nep-cse
Note: CF
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published as Asli Musaoglu Arikan & René Stulz, 2012. "Corporate Acquisitions, Diversification, and the Firm’s Lifecycle," Academy of Management Proceedings, vol 2012(1).
Published as Asli M. Arikan & René M. Stulz, 2016. "Corporate Acquisitions, Diversification, and the Firm's Life Cycle," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 71(1), pages 139-194, February.

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Related works:
Journal Article: Corporate Acquisitions, Diversification, and the Firm's Life Cycle (2016)
Working Paper: Corporate Acquisitions, Diversification, and the Firm's Lifecycle (2011)
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