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The diversification cost of large, concentrated equity stakes. How big is it? Is it justified?

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While the hypothesis that ownership concentration can affect the value of a company has seen a lot of empirical study, little light has been shed on a complementary problem, that these concentrated owners have a cost of their position due to an undiversified portfolio. Using a unique data set of the actual diversification of all Norwegian equity owners, we show that the largest owners of a corporation in fact have very undiversified equity portfolios, and that such owners have significant costs to their concentrated portfolios. At the level of risk of a benchmark portfolio, if they were to move from their present portfolio composition in risky assets to a well diversified portfolio, their returns would have increased by about 13 percentage points in annual terms. We ask whether this cost can be explained by estimated benefits of ownership concentration (private benefits), and show that extant estimates of private benefits are too low to offset our cost estimates.

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  • Ødegaard, Bernt Arne, 2009. "The diversification cost of large, concentrated equity stakes. How big is it? Is it justified?," UiS Working Papers in Economics and Finance 2009/22, University of Stavanger.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:stavef:2009_022
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    1. repec:dau:papers:123456789/3862 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Anaïs Hamelin-Schertzer, 2009. "Do small family businesses have a peculiar attitude toward growth? Evidence from French SMEs," Working Papers CEB 09-032.RS, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    3. Anaïs Hamelin, 2013. "Influence of family ownership on small business growth. Evidence from French SMEs," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 41(3), pages 563-579, October.
    4. E. M. Cervellati & P. Pattitoni & M. Savioli, 2016. "Cognitive Biases and Entrepreneurial Under-Diversification," Working Papers wp1076, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    5. Arugaslan, Onur & Cook, Douglas O. & Kieschnick, Robert, 2010. "On the decision to go public with dual class stock," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 170-181, April.
    6. Odegaard, Bernt Arne, 2017. "Is Household Diversification Increasing in Wealth? Norwegian Evidence," UiS Working Papers in Economics and Finance 2017/7, University of Stavanger.
    7. Roger, Patrick & Schatt, Alain, 2016. "Idiosyncratic risk, private benefits, and the value of family firms," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 17(C), pages 235-245.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Portfolio diversification; Large equity owners; Costs and benefits of equity ownership concentration; Private benefits.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G10 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - General (includes Measurement and Data)
    • G30 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - General

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