Acquisitions and firm growth: Creating Unilever's ice cream and tea business

The role of acquisitions has been widely discussed in management literature. There is considerable evidence that many acquisitions fail, often because of post-acquisition problems. More recently business historians have examined their role in the restructuring of the British, American and other economies after World War Two. Yet the historical and management literatures have been poorly integrated. This article seeks to address some of the issues raised in the management literature by contributing a longitudinal case study of the use of acquisitions by Unilever to build the world's largest ice cream and tea businesses. The study supports recent resource-based theory which argues that complementary rather than related acquisitions add value. It identifies the importance of local knowledge as a key complementary asset. It also identifies reasons why Unilever was able to integrate acquisitions quite successfully, including clear strategic intent and the fact that employee resistance was reduced because most acquisitions were agreed. Finally Unilever could take a long-term view because of its size, and relative unconcern for shareholder interests before the 1980s.     

Excess returns and international diversification: The Scandinavian view

The paper discusses excess returns within four Scandinavian stock markets and also how Scandinavian returns are related to the returns in non-Scandinavian markets. Some underlying reasons for the observed economically weak relationships between markets are reviewed. Moreover, some reasons why the interrelationships between markets can be expected to increase in the future are provided.     

Determinants of voluntary disclosure of segment information: A re-examination of the role of diversification strategy

This paper explores the determinants of management's decision to voluntarily disclose segment information. It is an extension of McKinnon and Dalimunthe (1993) who investigate the role of six hypothesised determinants. Their results indicate that firm size, industry membership, ownership diffusion, and the level of minority interest are related to the voluntary disclosure of segment information. However, they find that leverage and diversification into related versus unrelated industries are not related to this disclosure. It is the diversification finding that motivates our work. This paper explores the effect of differences in data, differences in samples, and differences in the measurement of diversification on the McKinnon and Dalimunthe (1993) results. Using an alternative definition of diversification, we find diversification strategy, firm size, and the level of minority interest to be related to segment disclosure while the results for ownership diffusion and industry are mixed. We find no support for a leverage effect.     

我国商业银行业务多元化、经营绩效与风险相关性研究

本文引入Herfindahl指数衡量银行业务结构多元化程度,通过建立多元化绩效、多元化风险以及风险—绩效模型,运用2000-2010年间我国19家主要商业银行的面板数据,对商业银行收入结构多元化、经营绩效以及风险的关系进行了系统的分析。研究发现,多元化有效降低了银行的风险,但是其对绩效影响并不明显,银行绩效的改善主要还是来自近年的产权改革、引进外资等治理机制上的变化,以及银行资产规模扩张带来的规模经济效应。这一结论对于我国银行业的进一步改革具有重要的借鉴意义。     

Specialization,diversification, and productivity: a panel data analysis of rice farms in Korea

This article examines the microeconomics of productivity associated with specialization/diversification in production activities, with an application to Korean rice farms. Korean rice farms tend to be very small and highly specialized. Our analysis examines the productivity effects associated with both farm size and farm specialization/diversification in Korean agriculture. Relying on farm‐level panel data, the analysis studies farm productivity in a multi‐input multi‐output context, accounting not only for changes in inputs and technical change in rice production, but also for the role of diversification in the production of other crops in current and previous periods. We find positive but small productivity gains from farm diversification. These gains come mostly from complementarity effects across farm outputs, with minimal effect of scale economies. The positive complementarity effects work against nonconvexity effects, which provide strong productivity incentives for rice farms to specialize.     

日本M&A市场的新趋势

随着经济全球化的深入,世界规模的企业重组和资金流动改变着各个行业中的企业势力范围。从10年前开始。日本企业为了保卫和加强现有的势力范围防止来自国内或国外的威胁开始了一场新的M＆A高潮。这次的N＆A不管在N＆A件数,还是在所涉及的行业、规模、收购金额大小上都有突破,在日本的M＆A历史上留下一页。同时,N＆A收购过程也改变了日本社会对M＆A的认识,也冲击到了日本传统的终身雇佣制。运用M＆A来解决日本社会面临的问题。如人口减少和老龄化的问题也是这次M＆A的新尝试。     

高技术企业多元化战略对创新持续性的影响——动态能力的调节作用

基于资源基础理论和持续创新内生机制，利用435家高技术企业2010—2018年面板数据，对多元化战略对高技术企业创新持续性的影响进行探究。结果表明，产品多元化与创新持续性呈正U型关系，技术多元化对创新持续性具有正向促进作用，产品多元化与技术多元化协同效应对创新持续性具有负向影响；动态能力强化了产品多元化与创新持续性之间的正U型关系，并正向调节技术多元化与创新持续性之间的关系。在动态能力调节作用下，高技术企业产品多元化与技术多元化协同效应对创新持续性具有正向影响。     

The long-run performance of diversifying firms

The corporate diversification literature presents a puzzle. Short-horizon event studies report positive abnormal returns around the announcement of a diversifying event, while studies that examine diversified firms find evidence that diversified firms are worth less than specialized firms (a diversification discount). If diversification is value destroying, perhaps the destruction occurs over longer periods than have been previously tested. This paper tests the hypothesis that diversifying firms have negative long-run abnormal performance following diversification by examining a sample of specialized firms that have a diversifying event from 1978 through 1998. The firms are tracked for up to five years past their diversification year. There is evidence that value is destroyed for small firms that diversify but enhanced for larger firms that diversify.

企业多元化经营问题初探

当今,很多企业选择以多元化经营作为自身做大做强的战略。然而根据不完全统计的结果,世界上企业的多元化战略75％是失败的,由于多元化导致企业失败的例子比比皆是。多元化本身没有对错,关键是如何去经营。文中从多元化战略的选择动机和优劣势分析入手,总结影响多元化经营成败的因素,从而希望企业在选择实施多元化战略的过程中能够取得成功。     

Diversification to mitigate expropriation in the tobacco industry

While it is well established that diversifying acquisitions by large, cash-rich firms destroy shareholder wealth, we document positive abnormal returns to such acquisitions in the tobacco industry. We show that these abnormal returns are associated with proxies for lower expected expropriation costs. Specifically, we show that wealth creation increases in the degree of domestic geographic expansion afforded by the acquisition (increasing tobacco firms’ influence in more political districts) and in the liquidity of tobacco firms’ assets (converting cash to harder-to-expropriate operating assets). We also show that the threat of expropriation constrains payments to shareholders before expropriation becomes certain in 1998.