KHAS Finance Webinars – Dr. Tolga Demir
The guest of the Finance Webinars series organized by Kadir Has University International Trade and Finance Department is Dr. Tolga Demir (Bilkent University) on April 5.
The webinar will be in English.
Abstract: In this paper, we investigate how going private affects corporate innovation activities. We compare the innovation activities of firms that went private to the innovation activities of firms that received a going-private offer but stayed as public for reasons unrelated to innovation. Using patent-based metrics, we find that the scale of innovation grows after going private. The most important innovations after going private have higher quality relative to the most important innovations before going private. Firms that go private also produce more influential patents in the following years after going private. In line with the predictions of agency theories, our results suggest that going private has a significant positive impact on the innovation performance of listed firms. We also find that, in public-to-private transactions, being acquired by a private equity (PE) firm does not bring an additional performance boost in terms of innovation in comparison to being acquired by a non-PE firm.
About the Speaker: Tolga Demir joined Bilkent University as an Assistant Professor of Finance in September 2020. Dr. Demir is also a Visiting Researcher at the Stockholm School of Economics and the Swedish House of Finance. He holds a Ph.D. in Finance from the Stockholm School of Economics. Prior to joining Bilkent, he worked as an Assistant Professor of Finance at Sabanci University between 2018 and 2020. His research focuses on corporate finance, entrepreneurial finance, private equity, innovation, and corporate social responsibility. He has taught undergraduate and graduate-level courses on corporate finance, valuation, entrepreneurship & venture capital, and private equity.
Date: April 5, 17.00 (GMT+3)
Title: Going Private and Innovation
Zoom Meeting ID: 864 5769 4608
Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86457694608