Cross-border opportunity sets: An international empirical study based on ownership types

摘要

This paper is the first, to our knowledge, to make the distinction between the investment opportunity set of real assets versus portfolio securities. We perform a large scale formal investigation of the investment opportunity set in global acquisitions based on ownership type over the period of 1985-2012. Compared to private acquirers, government acquirers have a much reduced investment opportunity set. Government acquirers invest in fewer target nations and industries, settle for smaller stakes, invest in countries with lower quality legal institutions and in nations with which political relations are more positive and see a 50% higher deal failure rate.