Public Health Emergencies And Impairment Of Corporate Goodwill

Nowadays,the global competition is fierce,and merger and reorganization is one of the effective ways for enterprises to optimize resource allocation,integrate industry resources,eliminate backward production capacity and promote industrial transformation and upgrading.The concentrated outbreak of merger and acquisition activities has promoted the increase of merger and acquisition price,leading to the phenomenon of "high valuation,high commitment and high consideration" of high-quality assets in the market,which makes goodwill become the core value of listed companies.How to promote the appreciation of goodwill and avoid the impairment of goodwill has become an important issue.Especially affected by the public health emergency of COVID-19 in 2020,the risk of business goodwill impairment becomes more prominent.This paper takes the public health emergency characterized by COVID-19 and the impairment of business goodwill as the research object,and on the basis of systematically collating the corresponding COVID-19 data of 31 provinces and 273 cities in the Chinese mainland,matches the epidemic data with A-share listed companies from 2014 to 2021,and tests the impact of COVID-19 on the impairment of business goodwill.In addition,twostage least squares instrumental variable method(2SLS)and quasi-natural experiment method were adopted to carry out endogeneity processing quasi,and the heterogeneity analysis was carried out by replacing explained variables,re-measuring core explanatory variables,re-eliminating special samples,and considering enterprise size,duration and industry type.The regulation mechanism is analyzed from three aspects: market demand,investment orientation and technological innovation.This paper draws the following conclusions:(1)the estimated coefficient of COVID-19 is highly significant and negative(1% significance),that is,the public health emergency characterized by COVID-19 leads to the decline in the value of business goodwill,resulting in the impairment of business goodwill.(2)Impacted by COVID-19,small and mediumsized enterprises are more likely to suffer goodwill impairment than large enterprises,mature enterprises with a longer existence are more likely to suffer goodwill impairment,and nonmanufacturing enterprises are more likely to suffer goodwill impairment.(3)Shrinking market demand amplifies the impairment effect of COVID-19 on corporate goodwill.When market demand becomes smaller and weaker,the impact of COVID-19 on the impairment of corporate goodwill becomes more prominent.(4)The "asset-light" investment orientation of enterprises aggravated the effect of public health emergencies on goodwill impairment.The higher the proportion of "asset-light",the more prominent the goodwill impairment effect caused by COVID-19.(5)High-tech technological innovation partly withstands the effect of the COVID-19 epidemic on the impairment of business goodwill and helps the value of business goodwill to "drop by the limit".Under the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic,high-tech innovation promotes the replacement of technology,realizes the contactless economy and weakens the risk of novel coronavirus infection.For enterprises with stronger technological innovation ability,It has a certain resistance effect in overcoming the impact of the novel coronavirus epidemic on goodwill impairment.