Cross-Border Mergers and Acquisitions as a Challenge for Sustainable Business

Abstract

When considering the challenges for sustainable business, companies implementing cross-border reallocation of capital by means of mergers and acquisitions should take into account the context and evaluation of attributes of their future implementation. The main aim of the paper is, therefore, to identify and specify the key attributes of sustainable cross-border mergers or acquisitions (M&As) influencing the considerations about their future implementation. On the basis of the views of managers from 120 companies (international corporations selected from the Zephyr database) located in 45 countries within the European area that had previously been the subject of a cross-border merger or acquisition, significant attributes were extracted in connection with their experience from their implementation. These attributes are taken into account when considering the implementation of a cross-border merger or acquisition in the future. A factor analysis of the data obtained allowed the extraction of three key attributes of implementation of a potential merger and acquisition process as an important tool of business sustainability—aims, concerns, and reasons. This paper further presents the basic parameters of the Attributes of Future Mergers and Acquisitions (AFM&A) methodology: eigenvalues, Cronbach’s alpha values, the percentage of the variance explained, inter-correlations of the extracted factors, and the results of an analysis of differences in the assessment of the extracted factors by managers. At the same time, no statistically significant differences were found in the assessment of the extracted merger and acquisition assessment factors. The study fills in the research gap in the area by identifying and specifying the attributes of considering the future implementation of M&A management in terms of the broader concept of this issue.

Strategic Corporate Sustainability in a Post-Acquisition Context

“…(4) The disparity in resources at the respective companies, combined with the difference in stakeholder demands, lead to divergence in the secondary strategic reasons and the focus of CS. (5) To overcome the potential conflicts emerging due to the different conceptions of CS, the transfer of knowledge and a soft integration approach were crucial [39,49,59]. Also, ( 6) the target's acceptance and understanding regarding the necessity of consolidating CS strategies were significant to enable the acquirer to capture valuable information for developing a group-wide CS strategy.…”

“…In an attempt of finding a context in which differences may be more pronounced, we chose the cross-border M&A case of an EMNE acquiring an AMNE. However, we assumed that, after a crossborder acquisition deal, the CS of the target and the parent company would influence each other [47][48][49] and should develop toward a joint CS strategy. Before we developed our CS evaluation framework, the specificities of EMNEs cross-border acquisitions in advanced economies were considered, which enabled us to draw contextualized interpretations to the evaluation results on this specific case.…”

Surviving after Cross-Border Acquisitions: How Business Relatedness, Host Country Experience, and Cultural Distance Affect Acquired Firms

“…From a theoretical point of view, this study contributes to the promising research area on the linkage between cross-border acquisitions and the sustainability of firms' competitive advantages, e.g., [18][19][20], by examining the effects on Italian target firms acquired by foreign investors. Overall, our results offer some interesting implications for both managers and policymakers and contribute to shed light on the sustainability of international competitiveness of Italian firms in the global competitive environment.…”

“…Therefore, the investigation of the outcomes on target firms, especially in terms of survival, is still quite unexplored and appears to offer vibrant lines of inquiry. As testified by the increasing number of studies on this topic especially in recent years, e.g., [10,11,[18][19][20], the exploration of the potential antecedents that may affect the survival of foreign acquired affiliates seems a particularly fertile research avenue.…”

Analysis of selected indicators of tax competition and tax harmonization in the EU

“…The topic of taxes and cross-border trade is also discussed in Hečková, Štefko et al (2019). Cardarelli, Taugourdeau, and Vidal (2002), Catenaro and Vidal (2006), and Itaya, Okamura, and Yamaguchi (2008) have investigated the likelihood of tax harmonization among noncooperative governments.…”