Does it pay to be globally diversified? A profitability analysis.

Details

Supervisors

Coeurderoy, Régis

Faculty

Louvain School of Management

Degree label

Master [120] en sciences de gestion

Abstract

With this thesis, we aim to analyse and understand the relationships between the different dimensions of global diversification (industrial, geographical, and the combination of both dimensions) and firms’ performance, represented by their profits in millions of euros, and their profitability in percentage. To help us understand these relationships, we performed a series of statistical tests on a database of the top 500 MNEs in terms of turnover for the years 2011 to 2015. Our results show that, contrary to what we hypothesised, diversifying the scope of their activities does not necessarily increase firms' performance.