Strategie di crescita esterna delle imprese leader in europa: risultati preliminari dell'utilizzo del data-base Ceris "100 top eu firms' acquisition/divestment database 1987-1993

The database ADD (Acquisition and Divestment Database) was established at Ceris in order to investigate the external growth of large EU firms. The selection of the companies included in the ADD was aimed at building an homogeneous database according to the Market Share Matrix (MSM) - a database generated within a EU project on the structure of European manufacturing industry. In principle, the consistency between the two databases makes it possible to use jointly information on diversification and internationalisation of EU firms (MSM) and on their external growth (ADD). For each company, we considered the deals directly or indirectly carried out by the holding company and by the affiliates controlled by a percentage exceeding 50%.The database consists of 3 sets of variables describing: i) the "target" of the deal, i.e. the company that has been acquired; ii) the acquiring firm; iii) the characteristics of the deal itself.