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Hometown Biased Acquisitions

  • University of Iowa
  • Cornell University

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

84 Scopus citations

Abstract

We show that chief executive officers (CEOs) exhibit a hometown bias in acquisitions. Firms are over twice as likely to acquire targets located in the states of their CEOs' childhood homes than similar targets domiciled elsewhere. Small, private home-state deals underperform other small, private deals, and the bias is stronger when acquirer governance is lax, suggesting that CEOs acquire private home-state targets for their own benefits. In contrast, large, public home-state acquisitions are value enhancing. CEOs create value in public home-state acquisitions by avoiding extremely poor deals and through deals with higher synergies. Thus, both agency issues and hometown advantages drive home-state acquisitions.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2017-2051
Number of pages35
JournalJournal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis
Volume54
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 1 2019

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