Agency problems arising from dispersed ownership are at the centre of the empirical studies of corporate governance that address managerial opportunism concerns. However, ownership is less diffused and more concentrated in the emerging market companies. We focus on Indian companies which have high ownership concentration in the form of substantial holdings by promoters and test the possibility of the principal-principal conflicts, that is, the conflicts between the dispersed and the majority shareholders. We study the impact of ownership concentration on the wealth of bidder shareholders, and also analyse the risk-taking behaviour of the insider-owners. We observe that high ownership concentration has a positive impact on the announcement returns, but a more detailed inquiry on the risk-taking behaviour of bidder firms reveals a non-linear relationship. Thus, our study offers evidence that ownership …