A Theory of the Firm


Book Description

This collection examines the forces, both external and internal, that lead corporations to behave efficiently and to create wealth. Corporations vest control rights in shareholders, the author argues, because they are the constituency that bear business risk and therefore have the appropriate incentives to maximize corporate value. Assigning control to any other group would be tantamount to allowing that group to play poker with someone else's money, and would create inefficiencies. The implicit denial of this proposition is the fallacy of the so-called stakeholder theory of the corporation, which argues that corporations should be run in the interests of all stakeholders. This theory offers no account of how conflicts between different stakeholders are to be resolved, and gives managers no principle on which to base decisions, except to follow their own preferences. In practice, shareholders delegate their control rights to a board of directors, who hire, fire, and set the compensation of the chief officers of the firm. However, because agents have different incentives than the principals they represent, they can destroy corporate value unless closely monitored. This happened in the 1960s and led to hostile takeovers in the market for corporate control in the 1970s and 1980s. The author argues that the takeover movement generated increases in corporate efficiency that exceeded $1.5 trillion and helped to lay the foundation for the great economic boom of the 1990s.







Mergers & Acquisitions


Book Description

This book deals with corporate mergers and acquisitions by analyzing the financial and strategic aspects. It starts with a chronological justification of the evolution of external growth operations and ends with case studies in order to put into practice the theoretical contribution of the previous titles. Through this book, we wish to detail the types of mergers and acquisitions, their modes, their motivations, their consequences and their performances. First of all, we propose a panoply of scientific research, methodological explanations and logical structuring to expose a subject of experience considered for a long time as a phenomenon in finance. Then, through a sample of 90 mergers or acquisitions, we analyze the effects of these transactions on French companies.




Corporate Takeovers


Book Description

The takeover boom that began in the mid-1980s has exhibited many phenomena not previously observed, such as hostile takeovers and takeover defenses, a widespread use of cash as a means of payment for targeted firms, and the acquisitions of companies ranking among the largest in the country. With the aim of more fully understanding the implications of such occurances, contributors to this volume consider a broad range of issues as they analyze mergers and acquisitions and study the takeoveer process itself.







Knights, Raiders, and Targets


Book Description

This volume deals with the increasingly important topic of hostile corporate takeover attempts.