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Acquirer’s Country of Origin and Target Firm’s Performance

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The Changing Strategies of International Business

Part of the book series: The Academy of International Business ((AIB))

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Abstract

Cross-border acquisition is a pivotal strategy for a firm. Our chapter seeks to examine the relationship between an acquirer’s country of origin and performance of the target firm, and to uncover what factors strengthen or weaken this relationship. Drawing on over 3000 firm-year observations for the period 2004–13, we found that target firms acquired by foreign acquirers perform better than those acquired by domestic acquirers. This additional performance gain from foreign acquisition is positively moderated by the characteristics of the acquirer-target industry and ownership linkages. Specifically, we find that this additional performance gain becomes stronger for targets locating in the same industry as the acquirers, while weaker for targets whose low-level ownership is owned by the acquirers.

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Acknowledgements

We thank comments from an anonymous referee. We also thank for comments from Mirko Benischke, Bert Jarreau, Christian Asmussen, Andreas Petrou, and conference participants at the Academy of International Business (UK and Ireland Chapter) in Birmingham, 12–14 April 2018, UK. We are responsible for all errors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Sussex Business School, Brighton, UK

    Jinlong Gu, Yong Yang & Roger Strange

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  1. Jinlong Gu
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  2. Yong Yang
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  3. Roger Strange
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

    Agnieszka Chidlow , Pervez N. Ghauri , Emma C. Gardner , Amir Qamar  & Emily Pickering , , ,  & 

  2. Management School, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Thomas Buckley

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Gu, J., Yang, Y., Strange, R. (2019). Acquirer’s Country of Origin and Target Firm’s Performance. In: Chidlow, A., Ghauri, P.N., Buckley, T., Gardner, E.C., Qamar, A., Pickering, E. (eds) The Changing Strategies of International Business. The Academy of International Business. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-03931-8_7

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