Impact Of Green M&A On The Performance Of China’s Polluting Firms

For a long time,China’s economic development has relied on industry and manufacturing enterprises.Now it is a critical period and window period for the industrial sector to achieve green transformation.Mergers and acquisitions(M&A)are the main means for enterprises to obtain advantageous technologies and integrate resources.Green M&A is an extension of technology M&A aimed at obtaining the green resources of target companies,such as technology,equipment,management,etc.,creating synergies,acquiring green competitive advantages,reducing environmental damage caused by enterprises,realizing clean production,reducing environmental costs,fulfilling corporate environmental responsibilities,and maximizing enterprise value.With the tightening of national environmental policies and the increasing pressure of public opinion on environmental protection,is the green M&A of heavily polluting enterprises really designed to obtain green resources and achieve green transformation and upgrading? Or is it just to cope with environmental policy regulation and shift social attention,without substantially improving corporate performance and environmental performance? Therefore,the performance of green M&A by heavily polluting enterprises deserves further research.Based on stakeholder theory,Porter hypothesis,and other theories,this paper uses M&A events of heavily polluting companies in China from 2012 to 2020 as samples.The event study method and financial indicator evaluation method are used to analyze the impact of green M&A on the performance of heavily polluting enterprises from three dimensions: long-term financial performance,short-term market performance,and social performance.Moreover,the original innovation capability of the enterprise is used as a moderating variable to analyze its influencing mechanism.The conclusions are as follows:(1)Green M&A positively affects the long-term financial performance of heavily polluting enterprises,and the stronger the company’s innovation capability,the smaller the improvement in long-term financial performance;(2)Green M&A has a positive impact on the short-term market performance of heavily polluting enterprises,and the moderating effect of enterprise innovation capability is not significant;(3)Green M&A has a positive impact on the social performance of heavily polluting enterprises,and the stronger the company’s innovation capability,the smaller the improvement in social performance.Based on these empirical results,this paper offers relevant suggestions at both the company and government levels,providing theoretical and practical reference for China’s green development.