Does strategic partnership matter to create value of a firm? An empirical study based on SBF 250 French firms

Strategic partnership is considered as an effective growth strategy for firms. This paper intends to investigate whether strategic partnerships create market value and the actual value, addressing the impact of acquisitions announcements on the stock market performance. A sample of 48 strategic partnerships were selected from the SBF 250 French companies (on Euronext Paris) and we used historical market and financial data between 1997 and 2012. The data collected from 48 strategic partnerships in France were analysed using the Student test for the study of events and tests on panel data estimation. The paper reveals that in the short term the announcement of a strategic partnership has a negative impact on performance as opposed to the announcement of a merger-acquisition. However, on the long-term, there is no positive impact (neutral impact) of strategic partnerships on financial performance. We explain this result by the phenomenon of “creation of compensatory value” in the context of a strategic and financial plan. This findings of the paper will help to enhance our understanding of the financial value creation of strategic partnerships of French listed companies.