Lifecycle theories of mergers and diversification predict that firms make acquisitions and diversify when their internal growth opportunities become exhausted. Free cash flow theories make similar predictions. In contrast to these theories, we find that the acquisition rate of firms (defined as...

Theories of corporate finance predict that young firms make acquisitions to exploit growth opportunities, while mature firms do so because they lack growth opportunities. Further, mature firms are more likely to make wealth-destroying diversifying acquisitions because of agency problems....

This study examines the influence of financial distress on corporate restructuring decisions and whether this restructuring varies across the Firm Life Cycle (FLC) stages of Pakistani non-financial listed firms for the 12 years from 2005 to 2016 inclusive. FLC stages and financial distress are...

As firms have more assets in place, more of management's limited attention is focused on managing assets in place rather than developing new growth options. Consequently, as firms grow older, they have fewer growth options and a lower ability to generate new growth options. This simple theory...