Families in Corporate Venture Capital

Mario Amore (), Samuele Murtinu and Valerio Pelucco

No 16159, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: Many works at the crossroads of entrepreneurship and finance have studied corporate venture capital (CVC)’s decision-making and performance. We explore a neglected aspect in this literature: the presence of families as dominant owners of CVCs’ parent organizations. Our data reveal that families are a key engine of corporate venturing activities: about one third of CVC deals in the US from 2000 to 2017 originated from family firms. Moreover, we find marked differences in the strategies and outcomes of family and non-family CVCs. Family CVCs syndicate more, join larger syndicates, and invest in ventures closer to the parent in terms of geography and industry - especially when the venture is informationally opaque and when the parent’s CEO is a family member. Family CVCs add more value to their portfolio companies, which exhibit a higher likelihood of successful exit, better post-IPO market performance, and more valuable patents after the IPO. Family CVCs are also better able than non-family CVCs to generate shareholder value for their parent companies. Finally, family CVCs invest more during a financial crisis. Collectively, our findings are consistent with the view that family control entails a mix of risk mitigation and long-term preferences beneficial for venturing activities.

Keywords: Corporate venture capital; Family ownership; investment; Performance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G24 G32 O32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-05
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP16159 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

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:cpr:ceprdp:16159

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP16159

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().