The financing of Chinese outbound mergers and acquisitions: Is there a distortion between state-owned enterprises and privately owned enterprises?

Zhe Sun, Tsvi Vinig and Thomas Daniël Hosman

Research in International Business and Finance, 2017, vol. 39, issue PA, 377-388

Abstract: This study offers novel theoretical and empirical insights into the financing of China’s outbound mergers and acquisitions (M&As). We examine whether the financing of Chinese outbound M&As is distorted between state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and privately owned enterprises (POEs). We conduct an empirical study using a dataset of 224 outbound M&A deals. We find that SOEs enjoy a higher level of financing capacity in terms of debt and equity compared with POEs, although SOEs demonstrate lower stock performance, which implies that there are financing distortions in Chinese outbound M&As. Furthermore, we find that state ownership compensates for the poor M&A performance of SOEs through positively moderating the effect of debt financing, which leads to a “fictional” prosperity for SOEs. This result denies our theoretical prediction that builds on a Western theory concerning the disciplining function of debt financing on firm value; it provides evidence that the positive effect of debt financing in Chinese outbound M&As is derived from financing discrimination.

Keywords: Outbound M&As; SOEs; POEs; Financing distortion; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:riibaf:v:39:y:2017:i:pa:p:377-388

DOI: 10.1016/j.ribaf.2016.09.005

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