When theory doesn't meet practice: Do firms really stage their investments?
Theory has often discussed the benefits of adopting a staged investment strategy in mergers and acquisitions when investments hold uncertain prospects. Specifically, firms should enter into a cooperative agreement, such as a strategic alliance, before they eventually decide to buy out a partner. In...
| Autores: | , |
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2013 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | IE |
| Repositorio: | Repositorio IE |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:repositorio.ie.edu:20.500.14417/3359 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://doi.org/10.5465/amp.2011.0110 https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14417/3359 https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/amp.2011.0110 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Investments Strategic alliance Mergers Acquisitions |
| Sumario: | Theory has often discussed the benefits of adopting a staged investment strategy in mergers and acquisitions when investments hold uncertain prospects. Specifically, firms should enter into a cooperative agreement, such as a strategic alliance, before they eventually decide to buy out a partner. In this paper, we first review the theoretical arguments supporting such an approach and then provide evidence showing that staged investments in mergers and acquisitions are far less frequent than theory predicts. We analyze a sample of 24,495 global transactions that occurred between 1995 and 2010 and find that firms stage mergers and acquisitions in only 1.26% of all deals. This figure changes little after we control for transaction- and environmental-level considerations. We propose several explanations of why staged investments are seldom used in practice, despite their theoretical properties. |
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