We study how ownership similarity between two firms affects the likelihood of an acquisition between them. Assortative matching arguments suggest that similarity between acquiring and target firms can encourage acquisition behavior since more similar partners can better understand one another...

We study successions from a non-family CEO back to a family CEO, which we label “Type-R” successions. In our sample of 489 Italian family firms experiencing the departure of nonfamily CEOs, these successions represent 42% of all cases. Our difference-in-differences results indicate that...