Doing Business in Emerging Markets The Benefits of Being Private Pablo Slutzky∗ August 15th, 2017 Abstract This paper studies how firms deal with business regulations that limit their operations. I first exploit a natural experiment to show that the ownership structure of a firm affects its degree of compliance with regulations, with publicly listed firms complying more than privately held ones. Then I show that this differential compliance imposes a burden on listed firms that helps explain the patterns of M&A activity in emerging markets. When the level of market regulations increases, private firms acquire listed ones, and when the level decreases the results are reversed. I find that this effect is stronger for listed firms that are subject to stricter auditing and enforcement standards, suggesting that scrutiny plays an important role. Taken together, these results uncover an additional cost faced by listed companies, identify a new driver of M&A transactions in emerging markets, and show evidence that high levels of regulation lead to opaque corporate structures. JEL Classification: G32, G34, G38 Keywords: International Finance, Mergers and Acquisitions, Ownership Structure, Emerging Markets, Reg- ulation. ∗Assistant Professor, Department of Finance, University of Maryland, R. H. Smith School of Business.
[email protected]. I am indebted to Charles Calomiris, Mauricio Larrain, and Daniel Wolfenzon for their continuous support. I am also grateful to Emily Breza, Murillo Campello, Marco DiMaggio, Andrew Hertzberg, Gur Huberman, Amit Khandelwal, Jonah Rockoff, Paul Tetlock, Stefan Zeume (discussant), and seminar and conference participants at BlackRock, Columbia Business School, the Federal Reserve Board, FMA, FRA, HBS, LBS, MIT, Notre Dame (Mendoza), Ohio State University (Fisher), Texas A&M (Mays), University of Maryland (R.