Economic inequality remains a persistent and widely studied issue in the social sciences. South Korea provides a striking example where the top 23 business groups, controlled by ultra-wealthy, family-owned conglomerates (chaebols), have maintained significant economic persistence and resisted...

This study examines the impact of the geopolitical risk (GPR) on the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) activities of South Korean business groups. Our empirical results indicate that GPR is positively associated with the ESG activities of South Korean firms, and this relationship is...

This study examines the relationship between corporate governance (CG) and agency costs using Korean market data, particularly for chaebol firms. The final sample includes 660 firm-year observations between 2016 and 2020 for Korean non-financial firms listed on the Korean Composite Stock Price...

Competition increases productivity boosting innovation and economic growth. Competition fosters cost reductions, innovation and promotes productivity growth. This paper reviews global and regional trends on conglomeration in digital markets, especially through mergers and acquisitions. In recent...

In this article, I assess conglomerates in Chile have affected product market competition. The analysis starts with a review of the efficiency and rent-seeking for the existence of conglomerates. The prima facie evidence fails to find efficiency reasons for the existence of conglomerates in...

The chapter is organized as follows. The section “The Business Structure of Financial Conglomerates” provides an overarching discussion on the corporate structure of financial conglomerates along with some data on these institutions. The section “The Drivers of Financial Conglomerates”...

This paper examines the impact of business group affiliation on the performance and corporate policies of Korean listed firms over the period 2007–2019. This study proposes a novel approach to observe heterogeneity in the affiliation effects. Overall, we conclude that business group...

In the present time, corporate restructuring has become an important component in the overall decisions of the company. Reorganization of a company’s operations that could be either financial or operational is called corporate restructuring. A company proposes to restructure its structure for...

This paper examines the effect of Japanese corporate groupings, keiretsu, on the informativeness of earnings. Keiretsu firms maintain close financial and personal ties through cross-shareholding, credit holding, interlocking corporate directorates, and various business transactions. We propose...

Since the crypto winter began in early 2022, several market crashes and institutional collapses of crypto intermediaries, particularly Three Arrows Capital and, recently FTX—have ravaged the innovative financial ecosystem. Among global regulators, the major discourse is no longer the full...

We exploit the rich data of business groups in China and identify sell-side analysts following multiple listed firms within a business group (BG analysts). For a group firm, we find that BG analysts issue more accurate forecasts than non-BG analysts. Such an effect is more pronounced when the...

Using a unique dataset of Korean firms, we demonstrate that the effects of public listing on trade credit demand are heterogeneous between chaebol and non-chaebol firms. While we find a significant negative relationship between public listing and trade credit demand for non-chaebol firms, we do...

Conglomeration has traditionally been prevalent in Asia, a trend that is currently exacerbated by the characteristics of digital markets. While conglomerates offer important benefits, from economies of scale and diversification to the development of new products, they can also have a negative...

The definitions of banking, and particularly the definition aggrandized under the Banking Act, were drafted in so a rigid manner that they failed to possess futuristic qualities and foresight in light of the greatly and ever evolving field of finance. An analysis of these definitions indeed...

This paper is a discussion of the manner in which diversification strategies employed by banks affect their economic values during financial crises. Based on a dataset composed of 5,158 observations of U.S. banks covering the sample periods between 1998 and 2012, I found a consistent discount on...

This paper highlights some of the key challenges for the Brazilian merger control regime in dealing with mergers involving digital platform ecosystems (DPEs). After a quick introduction to DPEs, we illustrate how conglomerate effects that are raised by such mergers remain largely unaddressed in...

Neoliberal strategy, which was adopted and implemented after 1987, lies behind the success of South Korean conglomerates ( chaebols ), and it was strengthened during the Asian financial crisis in 1997. Faced with new spatio-temporal conditions and the massive struggle of workers, the chaebols...

In this study, we find evidence of tunneling in mergers among affiliated firms that belong to Korean business groups. Using a recent sample of Korean mergers during the 2000–2020 period, we find that control-motivated mergers to enhance the controlling family’s control over the business...

We examine the effect of news media consolidation on local business news dissemination and its consequences for local investors and capital markets. We use acquisitions of television stations by Sinclair Inc. as plausibly exogenous shocks to local news coverage since Sinclair is alleged to...

Conglomerate merger control went out of fashion in the United States and the European Union several decades ago. Both jurisdictions embraced the premise that non-horizontal mergers should normally be considered benign because exclusionary theories of harm are economically implausible, and...

A network/search view of international trade in differentiated products is proposed. It is shown that this view can explain the importance of ethnic and extended family ties in trade, the success of diversified trading intermediaries such as Japan's sogo shosha, and the ubiquity of government...

We show that industrial ownership structures, such as keiretsu groupings in Japan, may significantly impact firms' incentives to engage in FDI. While the previous literature has mainly focused on the cost of capital advantages enjoyed by keiretsu firms, this paper examines two relatively...

The growth of multinational corporations and conglomerate firms is one of the effects of globalization and the vast expansion of the global economy. The complexity of these company structures has, however, become a major cause of concern for governments around the globe, particularly with regard...

After facilitating the rise of streaming giants like Netflix and Amazon by licensing them high-quality content, America’s leading media conglomerates have radically changed course. They are increasingly implementing a new partial disintermediation strategy, which limits the licensing of...

We study the effect of social connections between divisional managers and CEO on the scale and success of innovation activities in U.S. diversified conglomerates. Divisional managers who previously worked or studied with CEO file a greater number of patents during their tenure at the segment....