International acquisition performance and experience: A resource-based view. Evidence from French acquisitions in the United States (1988–2004)

Does an acquirer with extensive acquisition experience outperform an acquirer with little or no acquisition experience? Does an acquirer with varied growth mode experience (i.e. a company undertaking not only acquisitions but also joint ventures) outperform a company that has very homogeneous experience (i.e. a company growing exclusively through acquisitions)? The main purpose of our article is to examine these two questions in-depth and to attempt to provide some answers. The questions led us to analyze the valuation effect of the acquirer's experience for 291 French acquisitions in the United States. The results were mixed with regard to the relationship between acquisition performance, acquisition experience and heterogeneous experience. On the one hand we found no relationship between the acquisition performance and heterogeneous experience of French acquirers, which is not consistent with the literature on stock market valuation of homogeneous “experience trajectories” [Singh, H., Zollo, M., 1998. The impact of knowledge codification, experience trajectories and integration strategies on the performance of corporate acquisitions. Working Paper INSEAD, 98,62,SM.]. On the other hand, our findings indicate that the relationship between the acquisition performance and acquisition experience of French acquirers follows a curvilinear (inverted U-shaped) distribution.