文档介绍：Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, 25(5) & (6), June/July 1998, 0306-686X
VENTURE CAPITAL AND PRIVATE EQUITY: A
REVIEW AND SYNTHESIS
Mike Wright and Ken Robbie*
The 1980s control activities, . . ., have demonstrated that the M&M [Modigliani
and Miller] theorems (while logically sound) are empirically incorrect. The
evidence from LBOs, leveraged restructurings, takeovers and venture capital firms
has demonstrated that leverage, payout policy and ownership structure (that is,
who owns the firm's securities) do in fact anizational efficiency, cash flow
and, therefore, value. (Jensen, 1993, )
INTRODUCTION
In the last fifteen years, venture capital has emerged as an important area of
finance for academic researchers. This interest lags well behind the
development of the venture capital industry both in the US and elsewhere.
Venture capital is typically defined as the investment by professional investors
of long-term, unquoted, risk equity finance in new firms where the primary
reward is an eventual capital gain, supplemented by dividend yield. Earlier
reviews of the literature have covered the period up to 1981 (Tyebjee and
Bruno, 1981), from 1981 to 1988 (Fried and Hisrich, 1988) and more recent
research, although less exhaustively, by Barry (1994). The emphasis in these
earlier reviews has been on US studies which focus primarily on formal
venture capital as early stage finance, frequently with a high technology
aspect.
The purpose of this paper is to review and synthesise a wide body of research
relating to venture capital and thence to identify possible directions for future
research. In undertaking such a task it is important at the outset to identify
what is distinctive about venture capital and which justifies its separate
* The authors are respectively, Professor of Financial Studies and Director, and Deputy Director
and Senior Research Fellow both at the Centre for Management Buy-out Research, University of
Not