IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/fmktpm/v24y2010i1p87-102.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Trends in corporate diversification

Author

Listed:
  • Nilanjan Basu

Abstract

This paper studies the diversification and refocusing strategies of firms in the last three decades. The 1980s were characterized by a trend towards greater focus. This trend slackens in the 1990s to be replaced by a surge in the number of newly listed single-segment firms. From 2000 to 2007 there is very little change in the proportion of diversified firms. Overall, the proportion of conglomerates declines from 40% to 17% from 1980 to 1997. In addition, about one third of the diversifying firms reverse the diversification decision within four years. The analysis of the statements made by these firms suggests that there is significant heterogeneity in the motivations behind diversification. Copyright Swiss Society for Financial Market Research 2010

Suggested Citation

  • Nilanjan Basu, 2010. "Trends in corporate diversification," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 24(1), pages 87-102, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:fmktpm:v:24:y:2010:i:1:p:87-102
    DOI: 10.1007/s11408-009-0123-0
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11408-009-0123-0
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11408-009-0123-0?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Laeven, Luc & Levine, Ross, 2007. "Is there a diversification discount in financial conglomerates?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(2), pages 331-367, August.
    2. Stein, Jeremy C, 1997. "Internal Capital Markets and the Competition for Corporate Resources," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 111-133, March.
    3. Philip G. Berger & Rebecca Hann, 2003. "The Impact of SFAS No. 131 on Information and Monitoring," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(2), pages 163-223, May.
    4. Barbara Rovetta, 2006. "Investment Policies and Excess Returns in Corporate Spin-offs: Evidence from the US Market," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 20(3), pages 287-307, September.
    5. Schmid, Markus M. & Walter, Ingo, 2009. "Do financial conglomerates create or destroy economic value?," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 193-216, April.
    6. Manuel Ammann & Daniel Hoechle & Markus Schmid, 2012. "Is there Really No Conglomerate Discount?," Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(1-2), pages 264-288, January.
    7. Jose Manuel Campa & Simi Kedia, 2002. "Explaining the Diversification Discount," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(4), pages 1731-1762, August.
    8. John R. Graham & Michael L. Lemmon & Jack G. Wolf, 2002. "Does Corporate Diversification Destroy Value?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(2), pages 695-720, April.
    9. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 2004. "New lists: Fundamentals and survival rates," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 229-269, August.
    10. David S. Scharfstein, 1998. "The Dark Side of Internal Capital Markets II: Evidence from Diversified Conglomerates," NBER Working Papers 6352, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nadine Gatzert & Hato Schmeiser, 2011. "On the risk situation of financial conglomerates: does diversification matter?," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 25(1), pages 3-26, March.
    2. Matthias Pfister & Rico Wyss, 2010. "Delistings of secondary listings: price and volume effects," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 24(4), pages 395-418, December.
    3. Lord, Richard A. & Saito, Yoshie, 2017. "Refocusing through discontinued operations in response to acquisitions and diversification," Advances in accounting, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 71-84.
    4. Nicola Cetorelli & Michael G. Jacobides & Samuel Stern, 2021. "Mapping a sector's scope transformation and the value of following the evolving core," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(12), pages 2294-2327, December.
    5. Pascal Nguyen, 2016. "The role of the seller’s stock performance in the market reaction to divestiture announcements," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 40(1), pages 19-40, January.
    6. Guerras-Martín, Luis Ángel & Ronda-Pupo, Guillermo Armando & Zúñiga-Vicente, José Ángel & Benito-Osorio, Diana, 2020. "Half a century of research on corporate diversification: A new comprehensive framework," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 124-141.
    7. Manuel Villasalero, 2018. "Multi-Business Firms, Knowledge Flows and Intra-Network Open Innovations," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 9(1), pages 162-179, March.
    8. Stefan Erdorf & Thomas Hartmann-Wendels & Nicolas Heinrichs & Michael Matz, 2013. "Corporate diversification and firm value: a survey of recent literature," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 27(2), pages 187-215, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stefan Erdorf & Thomas Hartmann-Wendels & Nicolas Heinrichs & Michael Matz, 2013. "Corporate diversification and firm value: a survey of recent literature," Financial Markets and Portfolio Management, Springer;Swiss Society for Financial Market Research, vol. 27(2), pages 187-215, June.
    2. Elsas, Ralf & Hackethal, Andreas & Holzhäuser, Markus, 2010. "The anatomy of bank diversification," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 34(6), pages 1274-1287, June.
    3. Richard Borghesi & Joel Houston & Andy Naranjo, 2007. "Value, Survival, and the Evolution of Firm Organizational Structure," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 36(3), pages 5-31, September.
    4. Curi, Claudia & Murgia, Maurizio, 2018. "Divestitures and the financial conglomerate excess value," Journal of Financial Stability, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 187-207.
    5. Hoechle, Daniel & Schmid, Markus & Walter, Ingo & Yermack, David, 2012. "How much of the diversification discount can be explained by poor corporate governance?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(1), pages 41-60.
    6. Acharya, Viral V. & Amihud, Yakov & Litov, Lubomir, 2011. "Creditor rights and corporate risk-taking," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(1), pages 150-166, October.
    7. Ranjan D’Mello & Xinghua Gao & Yonghong Jia, 2017. "Internal control and internal capital allocation: evidence from internal capital markets of multi-segment firms," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 22(1), pages 251-287, March.
    8. Elsas, Ralf & Hackethal, Andreas & Holzhaeuser, Markus, 2006. "The Anatomy of Bank Diversification," Discussion Papers in Business Administration 1167, University of Munich, Munich School of Management.
    9. Stefan Erdorf & Thomas Hartmann-Wendels & Nicolas Heinrichs & Michael Matz, 2012. "Corporate Diversification and Firm Value: A Survey of Recent Literature," Cologne Graduate School Working Paper Series 03-01, Cologne Graduate School in Management, Economics and Social Sciences.
    10. Xi He, 2009. "Corporate Diversification and Firm Value: Evidence from Post‐1997 Data," International Review of Finance, International Review of Finance Ltd., vol. 9(4), pages 359-385, December.
    11. Nilakshi Borah & Liu Pan & Jung Chul Park & Nan Shao, 2018. "Does corporate diversification reduce value in high technology firms?," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 51(3), pages 683-718, October.
    12. Filson, Darren & Olfati, Saman, 2014. "The impacts of Gramm–Leach–Bliley bank diversification on value and risk," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 209-221.
    13. Andreou, Panayiotis C. & Doukas, John A. & Koursaros, Demetris & Louca, Christodoulos, 2019. "Valuation effects of overconfident CEOs on corporate diversification and refocusing decisions," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 182-204.
    14. Young Jun Cho, 2015. "Segment Disclosure Transparency and Internal Capital Market Efficiency: Evidence from SFAS No. 131," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(4), pages 669-723, September.
    15. Schaeck, K. & Silva Buston, C.F. & Wagner, W.B., 2013. "The Two Faces of Interbank Correlation," Discussion Paper 2013-077, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    16. Holger Mueller, 2016. "Reallocation of Capital and Labor within Firms," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, Springer;Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, vol. 152(4), pages 289-303, October.
    17. van Lelyveld, Iman & Knot, Klaas, 2009. "Do financial conglomerates create or destroy value? Evidence for the EU," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(12), pages 2312-2321, December.
    18. Patrick Bielstein & Mario Fischer & Christoph Kaserer, 2018. "The cost of capital effect of M&A transactions: Disentangling coinsurance from the diversification discount," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 24(4), pages 650-679, September.
    19. Sawada, Michiru, 2013. "How does the stock market value bank diversification? Empirical evidence from Japanese banks," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 40-61.
    20. Marinelli, Federico, 2008. "Persistence of outstanding performance and shareholder value among diversified firms: The impact of past performance, efficient internal capital market, and relatedness of business segments," IESE Research Papers D/758, IESE Business School.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Diversification; Focus; G34;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G34 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Mergers; Acquisitions; Restructuring; Corporate Governance

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:fmktpm:v:24:y:2010:i:1:p:87-102. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.