Corporate venture capital, disclosure, and financial reporting

Research Question/Issue Corporate venture capital (CVC) is one of the most important avenues for corporate innovation today, yet there can be unintended consequences related to anticompetitive practices. Recent scrutiny from regulators and policymakers underscores their growing desire for more information about firms' CVC investment activities, even of those previously believed to be too small to matter. Research Findings/Insights Using a comprehensive sample of 115 publicly listed US parent firms that owned 133 CVC firms, we document that for almost half of the firm-years in our sample, parent firms do not disclose any information about their CVC program. Among the parent firms that do disclose their CVC activities, we find that they disclose less when they make investments in industries outside of their core industry. Firms with a CVC program, relative to similar firms without a CVC program, tend to make more future acquisitions and report less future goodwill asset write-downs. Theoretical/Academic Implications Variation in details of CVC disclosures explained by within-industry versus outside-industry investments is consistent with theories on voluntary/discretionary disclosure. Future research can examine other characteristics of CVC investments that explain how parent firms report their CVC activities. Practitioner/Policy Implications This study documents the current state of affairs with respect to the amount of publicly available CVC information for a large sample of firms, an important starting point for regulators and policymakers to conduct an informed debate about whether disclosure requirements should be expanded. Our focus on investment disclosures can apply to other settings in which the investing public could benefit from greater transparency, such as Special Purpose Acquisition Companies (SPACs).