We would like to invite you to participate in Management Engineering(ME) Seminar.

1. When: October 25th (Thursday), 16:00~17:20
2. Where: 9708 lecture room
3. Speaker: Prof. Young Bong Chang (Sungkyunkwan University)
4. Topic: The impact of firm trajectories in early IPO stages on industry concentration: Evidence from Internet startups involved mergers and acquisitions
5. Research field: IT Management
* Lecture will be delivered in Korean.

Abstract:
Despite a series of policy reforms introduced to foster competition over the decades, U.S. industries have become more concentrated since the beginning of 21st century. We provide plausible explanations for a change in industry concentration by examining the role of M&As occurred in early post-IPO stages for newly listed firms. With a sample of IPO firms from the Internet and other industry sectors, we show that Internet firms are likely to be shorter-lived than their counterparts because the formers often become an acquisition target shortly after their IPO. While not all M&As lead to an increase in an acquiring firm’s industry, its industry becomes more concentrated when it takes over Internet firms. We also find that with an increase in market share for dominant firms, an industry becomes more concentrated over a time horizon. In our sub-period analysis with the periods before the 2000s, the acquisition impact of Internet firms on industry concentration becomes stronger than that of non-Internet firms when an acquiring firm is in less stable environments. Interestingly, non-Internet firms can improve their influence in the market by taking over newly listed Internet firms more than Internet firms can in the post-2000s. Overall, our study provides empirical evidence that an increasing number of firms are acquired in their early post-IPO stages despite their soundness in financial profile. Coupled with a large number of M&As observed in early IPO stages, our study uncovers the underlying reasons as to why U.S. industries have become more concentrated in recent decades.
Keywords: Internet startups, mergers and acquisitions, Industry concentration