Causes and Effects of Corporate Refocusing Programs
研究发现企业聚焦重组部分源于提升股东价值的动机，但通常需要先缓解代理问题，管理层才会启动资产剥离。聚焦企业因多元化造成的价值损失大于未聚焦企业，且在剥离前常出现CEO变更、外部大股东进入、收购失败或财务困境。聚焦相关公告的累计异常回报平均为7.3%，且与多元化政策破坏的价值显著相关。
We provide evidence that corporate refocusing are motivated, in part, by the desire to enhance shareholder value, but that it is often necessary for agency problems to be reduced before managers will begin divestiture programs. Diversified firms that refocus have significantly greater value losses from their diversification policies than multisegment firms that do not refocus. Major events of market discipline usually must occur, however, before managers attempt to undo suboptimal diversification programs, whereas the same events occur only rarely for a matched sample of nonrefocusing firms during the same time frame. Refocusing firms have a high frequency of CEO changes, and also often have new outside blockholders, unsuccessful takeover bids, and signs of financial distress in the period preceding their divestitures. Finally, we find that the cumulative abnormal returns over all of the refocusing-related announcements of a refocusing firm average 7.3%, and that these abnormal returns are significantly related to the amount of value that was being destroyed by the refocuser’s diversification policy.