(The) choice between acquisitions and joint-ventures: target’s financial statement comparability

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between target firms’ financial statement comparability and bidder firms’ boundary decisions. The study considers the initial public offering (IPO) context to exploit the features of asymmetric information and signaling theory. In IPO, bidder firms are unfamiliar with the issuing firms because they have little information about them prior to the IPO. Thus, bidder firms have to rely on the publicly available financial statements of newly listed target firms for a true evaluation of the latter. When a newly listed target firm has comparable financial statements, the bidder can evaluate them better. For the acquisition decision, the bidder is very selective in choosing a partner. This is because bidders cannot reverse their acquisition decision. Thus, its impact on the bidder is considerable. However, for the joint venture decision, the bidder is comparatively less selective in choosing a partner. This is because joint ownership allows for participants to share their overpayment risks. In sum, if the newly listed firms have comparable financial statements, bidder firms would choose acquisition of the newly listed firms, rather than opt for joint ventures with them.