Value of Control in Family Firms: Evidence from Mergers and Acquisitions

Nihat Aktas (), Santo Centineo and Ettore Croci
Additional contact information
Nihat Aktas: WHU Otto Beisheim School of Management, Germany
Santo Centineo: WHU Otto Beisheim School of Management, Germany
Ettore Croci: Universita’ Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy

Multinational Finance Journal, 2016, vol. 20, issue 2, 85-126

Abstract: This article studies European acquisitions in the period 1990-2013 to examine the relationship between family ownership and the propensity to undertake diversifying acquisitions. We show that family firms, especially those highly leveraged, tend to make more cross-industry acquisitions as this allows the owners to effectively diversify their wealth without selling their shares. Our results also indicate that family firms that value control high (i.e., family firms with high leverage) appear not to diversify at the detriment of minority shareholders.

Keywords: family firms; leverage; control motives; acquisitions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G34 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.mfsociety.org/modules/modDashboard/uplo ... s4a1m491aeq1ul14.pdf (application/pdf)
http://www.mfsociety.org/modules/modDashboard/uplo ... gleScholar/1272.html (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mfj:journl:v:20:y:2016:i:2:p:85-126

Access Statistics for this article

Multinational Finance Journal is currently edited by Panayiotis C. Andreou

More articles in Multinational Finance Journal from Multinational Finance Journal Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Theodossiou Panayiotis ().