Private Equity Funds and Firm Products
36 Pages Posted: 4 Feb 2018 Last revised: 15 May 2020
Date Written: January 1, 2018
Abstract
We examine changes to the products of public target firms after LBO using a novel dataset of firm products. We find that private equity funds cut target firms’ new products after LBO, especially when there is less room to improve the target firm’s performance through financial engineering. Additional tests suggest that PE funds cut target firms’ investment on product innovation mainly to boost their short-term performance at the cost of long-term performance. We find mixed evidence regarding the hypothesis that PE funds cut target firms’ new products to undo their overinvestment on product innovation before LBO.
Keywords: private equity funds, new products, leveraged buyouts
JEL Classification: G34, G23, L11
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation