Abstract

We analyze several hundred firms that expand via acquisition and0or increase their number of business segments. The combined market reaction to acquisition announcements is positive but acquiring firm excess values decline after the diversifying event. Much of the excess value reduction occurs because our sample firms acquire already discounted business units, and not because diversifying destroys value. This implies that the standard assumption that conglomerate divisions can be benchmarked to typical stand-alone firms should be carefully reconsidered. We also show that excess value does not decline when firms increase their number of business segments because of pure reporting changes. DOES CORPORATE DIVERSIFICATION destroy value? Several recent papers attempt to answer this question by comparing the market value of firms that operate multiple lines of business to the value of a portfolio of stand-alone firms operating in the same industries as the conglomerate’s divisions. Lang and Stulz ~1994! use this approach and find that multisegment firms have low

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