Female directors and UK company acquisitiveness

Abstract

We show that the presence, and proportion, of female directors are strongly related to the level of acquisitiveness of a company. This finding is made through a dataset covering significant size acquisitions made by FTSE 100 constituents over a 12-year time period from 2000 to 2011 and includes multiple controls for potential confounding financial and director characteristics. A novel main testing approach of zero-inflated Poisson regressions is utilised, with a variety of alternative tests and specifications further reported to add to the robustness of the study. The finding draws on psychological and decision-making research showing females to be less overconfident in their decision-making.