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This paper examines empirically how growth opportunities determine the relationship between corporate diversification and firm's value in an emerging economy.

This study employs annual data of Indonesian manufacturing firm's spanning five years. To test the potential nonlinear relationship between diversification and value, nonlinear regression model is employed. Baron and Kenny’s (1986) procedure is also employed to test the mediation role of the growth opportunities in the relation between diversification strategy and firm's value. This study also performs further robustness analysis on mediating role of growth opportunities on the relationship between diversification strategy and corporate value using path analysis approach.

The analyses reveal the U-shaped diversification and value relationship; this result suggests that the effect of diversification on value will vary across firms, the negative effect of diversification strategy on firm's value may reverse at higher levels of diversification. Further analysis indicates that such relationship is fully mediated by firm's growth opportunities.

Given the results, firms that are considering implementing diversification strategy should seek the optimal level of diversification to gain diversification premium. Furthermore, the manager should observe the best opportunities available for the firm before undertaking the diversification strategies.

This paper contributes to the existing literature on diversification strategy by extending the insight of this research area of a large emerging economy, on which prior studies have not reached conclusive results.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether any specific informal corporate governance mechanisms under consideration in this study, namely, political connection, business group affiliation and ownership concentration, are able to mitigate the diversification discount for emerging-market diversified firms using Malaysia as an examination lab.

The study uses a sample data of the entire non-financial public-listed firms in Malaysia over a 12-year period from 2001 to 2012. The generalized method of moments estimators are employed to account for the endogeneity of both corporate governance and diversification.

This study finds that business group affiliation particularly with large size can help to mitigate the diversification discount whereby political connection and ownership concentration magnify the discount. The finding is robust to alternative diversification measurements, to alternative methods and to endogeneity bias.

This result implies that diversified firms with affiliation to large business groups are able to reduce the magnitude of the discounted value of diversification.

This study helps managers, shareholders and investors to evaluate their current/future investments related to firms with diversified business segments. This study also provides implications for policymakers and regulatory bodies to assess the adequacy and competency of the current corporate governance frameworks in place.

This study incorporates the country-specific institutional dimension in designing a research framework that is more relevant in examining the influential effect of governance-related characteristics on the diversification-firm value relationship in an emerging market.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the presence of controlling shareholder affects the value of diversification based on Indonesian listed firms. It further examines whether the degree of controlling ownership and the types of controlling ownership matter.

Panel data were used over the period 2006-2010 with dynamic generalised method-of-moments estimations and it defined diversification as industrial diversification, international diversification or diversification in both. A few different thresholds for the control rights of the largest shareholder are also set.

The results show that industrial diversification improves firm value but international diversification does not, while diversified in both strategies discounted firm value. The presence of a controlling shareholder is found to have a significant diversification discount, and the effect is nonlinear, where the entrenchment effect occurs around 20 to60 per cent threshold of controlling across all types of diversified firms. Last, foreign firms are found to enjoy more value from industrial diversification, but it takes an adverse turn when these involve both diversification strategies. Government firms do not seem to be different from family firms.

The study shows the need to differentiate diversification strategies and account for non-linearity and ownership identity in modelling diversification value. Also, the degree of shareholders’ control can be a significant channel to address the agency issue on diversification value.

Under the backdrop of unique Indonesian corporate ownership, the presence of controlling owners is shown, and their ownership affects the value of diversification. The entrenchment effect however appears only at a certain range of ownership. This is a crucial guide for the shareholders to ensure an appropriate monitoring system is installed to maximize the shareholder’s value, especially in family firms.

The value of this paper is twofold. At first, the first empirical evidence on the diversification debate with Indonesian firms for its unique institutional setting is presented. Second, the standard modelling framework to investigate the types of ownership on diversification value is extended, which has rarely been covered in previous investigations.

This paper aims to explore the explanations of “information effect” and “agency effect” of corporate diversification with cross-industry knowledge under a crisis situation.

Based on an event study of 203 public companies’ crises in China between 2008 and 2018, the authors verify the information and agency effects of corporate diversification under a crisis situation by, respectively, examining the effects of interactions of corporate unrelated diversification with corporate transparency and knowledge deficiency attribution on the stock market’s responses to the crises.

It is found that corporate unrelated diversification serves as a buffer in protecting firm value while attribution of knowledge deficiency can be a burden. The buffering effect is stronger when the corporate transparency is higher but weaker when the crisis is attributed to be caused by corporate tacit knowledge deficiency.

Unrelated diversified firms should strengthen information communication with stakeholders so as to break down the stakeholders’ cross-industry knowledge barriers, and thus protect their own value at the crisis’ onset. Also, they can further buffer the loss by reducing stakeholders’ perceptions of the corporate tacit knowledge deficiency revealed in the crisis.

This study is the first to illustrate that the information and agency effects of corporate diversification strategy can be partially explained under a crisis situation, which provides meaningful insights about how firms can conduct knowledge management in their daily operations to deal better with corporate crises.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of corporate diversification on firm value in a sample of nine emerging markets including Brazil, Chile, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Poland, South Africa, Thailand, and Turkey. For the purpose of this study, a company is classified as diversified when it is operating in two or more lines of business defined by the two-digit SIC codes.

Employing panel data from 1,568 companies for the period 2005-2010, this paper estimates both a fixed effects model and a dynamic generalized method of moments model. Data are collected both at company level and segment level within each firm.

Overall, analysis results suggest that, for the period from 2005 to 2010, diversified firms in emerging markets are valued more compared to single-segment firms operating in similar industries, providing support for diversification premium.

The effect of diversification on company value in emerging markets is an important managerial and public policy concern. Although the literature on developed country diversified firms is rich, only a few studies have examined diversification-value relationship in the context of developing countries. Furthermore, most previous research on the value effects of corporate diversification in emerging markets has taken the form of case studies within countries and concentrated on the 1990s. This paper tries to fill these gaps by using a larger sample and more recent data and methodology.

Internal capital markets of diversified firms have been associated with inefficient allocation of investment funds across divisions, leading to value losses. Utilizing a sample of diversified firms that adopted or eliminated Residual Income (RI) plans between 1990 and 2009, we show that adoptions of these plans mitigate investment distortions and lead to value gains. Following the adoption of RI plans, diversified firms start allocating investment funds based on growth opportunities of their divisions. RI plan adopters lower their divisional investment levels, especially in segments with below-average growth opportunities. The overall investment allocation efficiency improves, and the diversification discount diminishes after the adoption of RI plans. However, RI plans appear to be used only as temporary tools for assessing corporate performance. The plans are adopted primarily by firms expected to immediately generate plan bonuses for management, and they are frequently eliminated by firms with bad accounting performance and low managerial bonuses. The study contributes to the literature on organizational efficiency, internal capital markets, and on the importance of measures based on economic profits or RI.

Using a large sample of diversified firms from 38 countries we investigate the influence of several national-level institutional factors or “institutional voids” on the value of corporate diversification. Specifically, we explore whether the presence of frictions in a country’s capital markets, labor markets, and product markets, affects the excess value of diversified firms. We find that the value of diversified firms relative to their single-segment peers is higher in countries with less-efficient capital and labor markets, but find no evidence that product market efficiency affects the relative value of diversification. These results provide support for the theory of internal capital markets that argues that internal capital allocation would be relatively more beneficial in the presence of frictions in the external capital markets. In addition, the results show that diversification can be beneficial in the presence of frictions in the labor market.

This study aims to investigate the impact of international diversification on the value and operating efficiency of European real estate firms.

The study is conducted using a panel fixed effects regression model to estimate the relationship of international diversification with firm value and operating efficiency. International diversification is mainly measured via the negative of the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI) using property-level data. Firm value and operating efficiency are proxied by financial ratios observed annually from 2002 to 2021 at the firm level.

The results demonstrate that international diversification has a negative effect on firm value. Additionally, it lowers operating efficiency by weakening a firm's ability to generate operating earnings from its assets. By examining whether the reduction in operating efficiency is due to the rental income channel or the capital gains channel, the authors find strong statistical evidence that international diversification negatively impacts capital gains. International diversification is negatively associated with net gains from property valuations (unrealized capital gains) and net profits from property disposals (realized capital gains).

The empirical analysis is limited to Europe.

This paper extends the geographical diversification literature. While existing literature focuses on domestic diversification within the United States, this paper explores the effects of international diversification on European real estate firms. To the extent of the authors' knowledge, this is the first paper to examine the impact of geographical diversification on capital gains.

Although there are theoretical costs and benefits to corporate diversification, there is ample empirical evidence that the stock market views the costs to outweigh the benefits (Lang and Stulz (1994), Berger and Ofek (1995), Servaes (1996), etc.) These studies are cross‐sectional studies which compare diversified firms to specialized firms and examine valuation multiples. The studies find that diversified firms have lower valuation multiples than specialized firms. This is called the diversification discount. In this paper, a sample of U.S. firms which are specialized and then become diversified are examined. We do not find evidence of a long‐term reduction in firm value associated with diversification.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of the corporate ownership diversification, i.e. how the involvement in the ownership of other non-financial firms affects the value of listed firms. The authors control for the unrelated diversification when the firm has different business segments in different sectors.

The authors analyze a sample of Chilean-listed firms between 2005 and 2009, in two stages. First, the authors compute the diversification premium or discount, defined as the part of the firms’ capitalization that stems from the diversification strategy. Then, the authors regress the premium or discount against the business and ownership diversification measures and other control variables.

In addition to a discount for unrelated business diversification, the authors find an ownership diversification discount when non-financial firms are shareholders of other firms. However, this discount turns into a premium when the firm gains the control of the owned firm, especially in related sectors.

The authors pioneer the analysis of the ownership diversification in Latin American firms. The results apply not only to Chile but also to a number of Latin American countries since many of these countries have, in common with Chile, a concentrated corporate ownership structure and a weak protection of investors’ rights.

En el presente trabajo analizamos el efecto sobre el valor de la empresa de la diversificación de la propiedad, es decir, de su participación en la propiedad y el control de otras compañías. Introducimos como elemento modelador la diversificación en sectores diferentes a los que constituyen el core business de la empresa.

Utilizamos una base de datos de empresas chilenas cotizadas en Bolsa entre 2005 y 2009. Nuestro análisis se estructura en dos fases. En primer lugar, calculamos la prima o descuento por diversificación, medidas como la parte del valor de la empresa originada por esa decisión. En segundo lugar, realizamos un análisis de regresión para explicar cómo la diversificación del negocio y la participación en la propiedad de otras empresas influyen en esa prima o descuento.

Encontramos un descuento por la adopción de estrategias de diversificación no relacionadas. Asimismo, nuestros resultados ponen de manifiesto la existencia de un descuento por la participación de una empresa en la propiedad de otras compañías. Sin embargo, ese descuento se convierte en prima cuando dicha participación permite a la empresa obtener el control de las otras compañías, especialmente en segmentos industriales relacionados.

Nuestro trabajo analiza por primera vez el efecto de la diversificación de la propiedad en empresas latinoamericanas. Nuestros resultados pueden aplicarse a otros países porque Chile comparte con otros países de su entorno rasgos como la concentración de propiedad de sus empresas y la escasa protección de los derechos de los inversores, factores que modelan el efecto de la diversificación.