International growth of Italian acquired mid-sized firms: an analysis of post-acquisition performance

The purpose of the paper is analysing the performance differences (labour productivity, employment and wages) of all the mid-sized firms acquired in the period between 1999 and 2009, compared with purely domestic firms (non-acquired), with two specific research focuses: 1) differences between industrial and financial investor; 2) geographic distance between acquirer and target firm. This study conducts a t-test analysis by using firmlevel accounting data from the Italian Mediobanca Research Department database. Results suggest that the performance of the acquired firms improve. Furthermore, the results show Prospective industrial and European acquirers adopt a cherry picking approach and tend to keep pre-acquisition performance levels unchanged, whereas financial and non-European acquirers take the opposite approach with an explicit view to increase post-acquisition performance. This study for the first time analyses the performance implications of cross border acquisitions of all the acquired mid-sized firms, which carry remarkable economic weight within the Italian economy