Creating Shareholder Value. The Case Carrefour Group

In recent years, the world economy is increasingly characterized by intense international competition and globalization of markets, which have shown the need to review both the objectives that the models and theories so far developed for the management of enterprises.
This revision stems from the fact that in the past, the main objective of a company was to sell or offer, every year, the largest possible number of products or services, thus focusing optics in a short period.
The current context in which enterprises operate, requires them to take value creation as a fundamental objective of business. Value creation means a creation of value-based company in the long term, focused not only on itself but also on its shareholders because they permit, through their funds, the operation of the company.
This new aim is chosen for two basic reasons:
1) because it is necessary be accountable to investors (shareholders) about operation of the company to continue investment in it;
2) because the measure of value creation is an opportunity to compare the performance of the companies with the rest of the market.
This situation triggered a new line of studies on the theory of value, considered a key that can open new and interesting prospects of research.
This work examines, conceptually, creating shareholder value through Merger and Acquisition deals (M&A), and in particular through acquisitions, and it compares the theoretical concepts with practical example of creating shareholder value through an acquisition between Carrefour Group and Ahold Polska.
The aim of the thesis is to see if the theory of value creation for shareholders addressed, from a theoretical point of view, is then applied to the case study. Also, with this work, we want to understand if the operations of acquisition and merger will create value or not considering as a reference point the Carrefour Group, which often makes this type of transaction to create value for its shareholders.
The comparison between theory and practice is very important for this work study because it allows you to see if all the theories and methods on creating value, which is conceptually analyzing, there are present and useful also in practice.
From a methodological point of view, the thesis is structured into three chapters.
The first chapter is based on a general theory of value creation for shareholders, emphasizing the importance in recent years and indicating the main methods for assessment of economic capital (like a Economic Value Added, Market Value Added, Cash Value Added etc.). It also is given a substantial space to the philosophy of Value Based Management which it is supporting and allowing the maximization of value creation in enterprises.
The second chapter presents an overview of the main methods by which a company can create value deepening the methodology of external improvements. In particular, mergers and acquisitions deals (M&A) are presented in general and are analyzed individually by giving more attention to acquisitions.
The third and last chapter deals with a case study to see how in practice companies can create value through external improvements. The case investigated concerns the Carrefour Group that in 2007 acquired, in Poland, Ahold Polska, which is a company of retail markets. In particular, it used the methodology of Economic Value Added (EVA) to see if Carrefour Group, through this strategy, has obtained or not the creation of value.
The theory of value creation is a quite recent concept and for this reason, in the realization of this thesis more tools have been used than books and business journals. In particular, the Web was very useful since, especially for the case study, it was possible to obtain certain information only from this type of instrument. In the section on the bibliography you can see all the links that were useful to be able to conclude this work better.