Hedge fund activists target firms engaging in empire building and improve their future acquisition and divestiture strategy. Following intervention, activist targets make fewer acquisitions but obtain substantially higher returns by avoiding large and diversifying deals and refraining from...

Are divestitures only an ex-post reactive correction of past inefficient acquisitions or are they also an ex-ante proactive strategy to enhance the value of future acquisitions? We find support for the latter. Firms engaging in divestitures before making acquisitions obtain higher abnormal...

This paper is the first to study the role of business school education in the creation and success of venture capital (VC) backed startup firms. Using a large new dataset of the educational backgrounds of entrepreneurial founders and executives and detailed data on business school rankings, we...