An Empirical Study On The Impacts Of Multiple Positions Of Directors Of Listed Companies On The Success Rate Of Cross-Border M&A

In recent years,the success rate of Chinese companies' cross-border M&A has continued to receive widespread attention.Under the background of comprehensively deepening reforms and opening up to the outside world,Chinese companies' crossborder M&A in the new era are still promising.But at the same time,what are the determinants of the success of cross-border M&A,and how to improve the success rate of Chinese companies' cross-border M&A is also a major practical issue that needs to be answered by the academia,people in the practice,and even policy makers.This paper studies the impacts of multiple positions of directors on the success rate of crossborder M&A based on the perspective of corporate governance at the micro level,which is conducive to enriching the influencing factors of the success rate of crossborder M&A,and proposes corresponding policy recommendations.The selected samples of this paper are 557 cross-border M&A events implemented by Chinese listed companies from 1996 to 2016.And Logit model,multiple linear regression model and Biprobit model are used to examine the impacts of multiple positions of directors(including duality between the chairman of the board and CEO,and interlocking directorate)on the pre-& post-acquisition performance,and the duration of cross-border M&A transactions.The empirical results show that there are certain differences in the impacts of multiple positions of directors on the success of different stages of cross-border M&A.First,duality will reduce the pre-acquisition performance and promote the post-acquisition performance,but both are not significant.Second,the interlocking directors have significant and positive impacts on both preand post-acquisition performance.Third,the combination of duality and interlocking directors will significantly promote pre-acquisition performance,as well as postacquisition performance but not significantly.Fourth,duality and interlocking directors will shorten the duration of cross-border M&A transactions respectively,but the combined effect of the two cannot promote the integration within the acquisition team through organizational learning,thereby extending the overall acquisition duration,but not significantly.Fifth,the pre-acquisition performance significantly affects the postacquisition performance,and the probability that the sample listed companies succeeded both in the pre-and post-stages is about 26.6%.Finally,there are also differences in the impacts of different kinds of interlocking directors on the success of different stages of cross-border M&A.The policy recommendations given in this paper based on the empirical results include: Chinese listed companies must fully recognize the complexity of cross-border M&A,firstly,they should take full advantage of the social network resources brought by the interlocking directors to serve the whole process of cross-border M&A,conduct adequate due diligence,carefully select the acquisition targets,and strengthen internal strategic audit.Secondly,enhance the assessment of board members including the chairman and(or)CEO,improving the acquisition rewards and punishments system and incentive mechanism,and use the power of intermediary firms(accounting and consulting firms,etc.)to supervise board members' behavior.Thirdly,further accumulate acquisition experience and improve the corporate organizational culture,strengthening organizational learning between board members and top managers to reduce information asymmetry within the company's decision-making level.Besides,social media should also pay more attention to Chinese listed companies' cross-border M&A,fully playing the role of public opinion supervision.