Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
  • Publication
    Firm Structure in Banking and Finance: Is Broader Better?
    (EY Global Financial Services Institute, 2014) ;
    Walter, Ingo
    Economies of scope in financial intermediation continue as a focal point in strategic and regulatory debates. In this paper, we summarize the theoretical research on the value of diversification in financial services firms, and survey the empirical research so far on the conglomerate discount in US and international financial services businesses. We also review research on the internal capital market efficiency in universal banks and financial conglomerates. The paper provides new empirical evidence on the conglomerate discount in US financial intermediaries and how that changes between non-crisis and crisis periods, showing a decline in the discount under turbulent conditions.
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  • Publication
    Is There Really No Conglomerate Discount?
    (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012-02) ;
    Hoechle, Daniel
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    Recent research questions the existence of a conglomerate discount. This study addresses two of the most important explanations for the conglomerate discount and finds evidence in support of an economically and statistically significant discount. The first explanation is that the risk-reducing effect of diversification increases debt value and consequently the use of the book value of debt leads to an underestimation of firm value in diversified firms. We show that the effect of using an imputed market value of debt reduces the conglomerate discount only by a small fraction. However, consistent with the value-transfer hypothesis, we find the discount to increase in leverage and no discount for all-equity firms. An agency cost-based explanation, which reconciles these conflicting findings, is that managers in levered firms become aligned with creditors and reduce firm risk at the expense of shareholders. Hence, the diversification discount only occurs in levered firms and stems from conflicts of interest between managers and shareholders over corporate risk taking. Second, the conglomerate discount may emerge from a neglect of the endogenous nature of the diversification decision. We first show that the conglomerate discount in fact disappears when we account for endogeneity in a Heckman selection model. However, when we account for fixed effects, the conglomerate discount remains statistically and economically significant, also in a Heckman selection-model or instrumental variables framework.
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    Scopus© Citations 37
  • Publication
    How Much of the Diversification Discount Can be Explained by Poor Corporate Governance?
    (Elsivier, 2012-01) ;
    Hoechle, Daniel
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    Walter, Ingo
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    Yermack, David
    We investigate whether the diversification discount occurs partly as an artifact of poor corporate governance. In panel data models, we find that the discount narrows by 16% to 21% when we add governance variables as regression controls. We also estimate Heckman selection models that account for the endogeneity of diversification and dynamic panel generalized method of moments models that account for the endogeneity of both diversification and governance. We find that the diversification discount persists even with these controls for endogeneity. However, in selection models the discount disappears entirely when we introduce governance variables in the second stage, and in dynamic panel GMM models the discount narrows by 37% when we include governance variables.
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    Scopus© Citations 200
  • Publication
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    Scopus© Citations 123