Performance Evaluation of Corporate Strategic Activities - a Market-Based Net Synergy Model

Abstract

Based upon the fact that most corporate strategic activities involve the exchange of assets, this study develops an analytical framework that can be applied to analyze the effectiveness and soundness of various types of strategic activities such as: the expansion activities which include mergers, acquisitions, strategic alliances and joint ventures, and extending current projects; and the reduction activities which include sell-offs , spin-offs, and equity carve-out. The analytical framework integrates the asset exchange ratio resulting from a corporate strategic activity with the synergy generated and is measured by the change of the party firms' asset market value and is able to analyze the performance of the activity in a timely manner. The proposed model, among the first, overcomes the limitations of existing models and is able to consider the agency issue between equity and debt holders. It is also able to assess the performance of a corporate strategic activity during its different stages of development and is much more general than existing models in its ability to be applied to various types of corporate strategic activities under various transaction scenarios (such as cash, equity-exchange, or a combination of both). In addition, it provides a performance indicator, the net synergy return that considers both the synergy generated and the costs incurred and is rarely found in existing measures, which is different from several other indicators that are already described in the literature: the operating synergy, the synergy of changing risk structures and the financial synergy Because the net synergy return is a performance measure similar to return on assets (or investment), it can be used as an indicator for both comparing the degree of success among different strategic activities and investigating the factors affecting efficacy of strategic activities. In this study, we also discuss the empirical issues when applying the model.

Keywords: asset exchange ratio, market synergy, strategic activity, agency issue

JEL Classification: G34