The Effect Of Legal Advisors On Cross-Border Acquisition Duration Of Latecomer Firms

In order to enhance the competitiveness of two markets both at home and abroad,and to achieve technological capabilities to develop and catch up,more and more latecomer firms seek to acquire advanced technology and superior resources through cross-border M&As.However,due to "liability of foreignness','liability of origin' and lack of internationalization experience,at present,cross-border M&As of latecomer firms are still faced with many difficulties.Among them the long duration of acquisitions' and 'halfway failures' are two representative phenomena of the trouble that currently faced by latecomer firms.In this regard,how to play the role of professional service organizations,like legal advisors or financial advisors,in M&As has become an important topic for people from both academic and industryConsidering this realistic background,this paper focuses on a core topic of 'How to use the experience of legal advisors to ensure the speed of overseas M&As of latecomer firms' by establishing a bridge for the experience learning from the"latecomer firms' to 'legal advisors' and in-depth analyzing the experience learning mechanism from the 'latecomer firms' to 'legal advisors'.What's more,in order to further open up the influence mechanism of legal advisors' experience on the acquisition duration,and bring more enlightenment to the actual decision-making of enterprises,this paper subdivides the experience type of legal advisors into 'the richness of the experience of legal advisors' and ' the degree of localization experience of legal advisors '.In the context of the changes of 'acquirors' experience' and 'cultural distance',this paper explores the impact of these two types of experience on acquisition duration of latecomer firmsThrough the empirical analysis of 235 cross-border M&A events of Chinese listed companies in 2000-2018,this paper has the following three major findings:(1)The richness of experience and the degree of localization experience of legal service companies are both positive to acquisition duration;(2)The prior experience of acquirors can play a 'substitute effect' on the two types of experience of legal advisors,thereby negatively moderating the focal effect;(3)The cultural distance can positively moderate the focal effect.All in all,combing theoretical analysis and empirical research,this paper explores the relationship between legal advisors and the acquisition duration of latecomer firms,complementing the gap in existing research on the experience of legal advisors,and also providing a theoretical guiding on how latecomer firms from China to make a decision on choosing a third party professional service organization in cross-border M&As.