This study examines the long-term effects of expansion through mergers and acquisitions in Brazil and South Africa. Firms from these emerging markets are among the most active globally in terms of utilising acquisitions as a growth strategy. We use an unbalanced panel of listed firms in Brazil and South Africa over the period 1980 to 2014, and employ the System Generalised Method of Moments estimation technique in order to control for unobservable heterogeneity and potential endogeneity problems. For both countries, the results obtained suggest there is persistence in profits and that organic growth pays off immediately – but size does not have a bearing on profits. Acquisitions are damaging in the short-term for South African firms, but have no influence on Brazilian firms. In both countries, there is no evidence of a permanent penalty for becoming an acquirer. While leverage and experience in acquisitions impact negatively on the profits of South African acquirers, they do not have any effect on the profits of Brazilian acquirers.