| Reports of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China point out that the construction of ecological civilization is the millennium development plan for the sustainable development of the Chinese nation.Prevention and control of pollution and the elimination of major risks and targeted poverty alleviation are the three major battles for building a moderately prosperous society in all respects.Green development has become one of the basic concepts of China's economic and social development.It is of great significance to promote the construction of ecological civilization by adhering to the concept of green development and adhering to the path of sustainable development.Under the background of ecological civilization construction,how to rationalize the relationship between development and environmental protection has become a major problem facing heavy polluting enterprises.To realize energy conservation,emission reduction and implementing the policy of national ecological civilization construction,green mergers and acquisitions(M&As)have become an important means to transform enterprises into cleaner production areas.Between 2008 and 2014,32.41%of M&As in heavy polluting enterprises were green M&As.Green M&As are the ones made by heavy polluting enterprises for the purpose of energy conservation,emission reduction and environmental protection.The purpose of green M&As is to acquire or expand the green competitive advantage.Following the existing research framework of M&As,this paper mainly studies the following three parts:the influencing factors of green M&As,green acquisition premium and its formation mechanism,green economic performance and social responsibility performance.First,in terms of the factors affecting the green M&As of heavy polluting enterprises,this paper studies the relationship between the external environmental regulation and internal CEO characteristics on green M&As.First of all,the external environmental regulation significantly affects the decision of green M&As.Empirical results indicate that different types of environmental regulations have different impact on the implementation of the strategy of green M&As.Particularly,the relationship between market-base regulation and green M&As decision is inverted u-shape;as the strength of market-based environmental regulation increases,the possibility of green M&As increases first and then decreases.The relationship between the command-control environmental regulation and the green M&As of enterprises is not significant,and it cannot inspire the target of environmental protection through green merger.And informal environmental regulation is positively correlated with green M&As;along with the social public awareness of environmental protection issues,the possibility of green M&As increases.Furthermore,the paper discusses the relationship between formal environmental regulation and informal environmental regulation.Informal environmental regulation by influencing the formal environmental regulation influences the green M&As decision.Formal environmental regulation plays an intermediary role between informal environmental regulation and green M&As.Then,the environmental characteristics of CEO significantly affect the green M&As decision.The empirical results show that on the one hand,the higher the CEO's environmental consciousness,the greater the chance of green M&As.Through the implementation of green M&As,enterprises access to energy-conservation and emission-reduction techniques or transform into low energy-consumption and low-pollution industry to reach the purpose of protecting the environment.Besides,the enterprise's operation condition moderates the relationship between them negatively.The effect of path dependence is obvious in the large enterprises which grows faster with stronger profitability and lower leverage.Due to path dependence,CEO of environmental consciousness and green M&As is weakened.On the other hand,the environmental protection experience of the CEO is positively correlated with the green M&As decision.Compared with the CEO without environmental protection experience,the CEO has the experience of environmental protection means more knowledge on national policies,market and environment-protection techniches,so they are more likely to make acquisitions.Meanwhile,the paper also considers the influence of deal price on the success of M&As.The higher the deal price,the more likely the deal will be concelled.However,due to the CEO's environment protection experience,the negative relationship between deal price and M&As is weakened.Finally,this paper examines the relationship between external influence factors and internal factors.The study finds that by influencing the CEO's environmental awareness,external environmental regulation affects green M&As decisions.CEO's environmental awearness plays a mediating role,and CEO environment protection experience's mediation effect is not significant.Second,the research further examines the premium features of green M&As and considers the formation mechanism of premium from the two aspects of national policy and property right.The study finds that in the process of M&As,the re-measurement of the assets in the balance sheet and the ones off the balance sheet in the target is the main reason for the formation of asset evaluation premium.Getting compensation for the loss of control rights is the main reason for the formation of control transfer premium.Since the whole society emphasize the importance of the construction of ecological civilization,both of the asset evaluation premium and control transfer premium is high.It leads to the higher green premium.At the same time,with the support of national policies,the premium is further improved after the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party.From the perspective of property right,state-owned enterprises have better tolerance to green merger premium in order to quickly implement the national policies.Third,this paper finally examines the economic performance and social responsibility performance of green M&As.In economic performance,the optimization of the external business environment for green M&As provide more credit and less tax for enterprises,laying the foundation for improving the economic performance of M&As.At the same time,green production is still a blank field,which owns large market potential,weaker market competition.The enterprises who are the first to enter the field can occupy a favorable niche and get first mover advantage.In the social responsibility performance,the effect of green M&As on social responsibility needs professional evaluation,it is difficult for the public to identify the effect of the acquisition of green.So green M&As become a means of meeting the requirements of the government and reducing the cost of public anger while seeking economic benefits.The empirical results show that green M&As are the behavior of heavy polluting enterprises to pursue the economic essence with an excuse of protecting the environment.Compared with the previous researches,the innovation points of the paper are as follows:First,the green M&As in this paper are the expansion and enrichment of the researches related to green investment.Under the background of ecological civilization construction,more and more enterprises begin to transform to cleaner production field.Therefore,more and more scholars begin to pay attention to the green investment,and green investment has formed many research results.However,it is necessary to point out that the listed company are voluntary to disclosure the green investment data.The availability of data is difficult,and it is also hard to fully reflect the green investment.At the same time,researches on green investment maily study whether heavy polluting enterprises invest in green filed.And fewer paper evaluate the efficiency of the green investment.While,M&As are an important part of investment.Green M&As are a further derivation of green investment.This paper studies the issue of green investment in heavily polluting enterprises from the perspective of M&As,which is further refinement of green investment research.In terms of data availability,the acquisition data is more accurate,and it can also evaluate the effect of M&As.Second,this paper enriches the content of the research framework of macro-environmental regulation to corporate behavior and discusses the effect of different mechanisms of environmental regulation on environmental protection.Fewer papers study the topic of different types of environmental regulation on the enterprise's environmental protection investment.Under framework of macro-environmental regulation to corporate behavior,the paper both researches the effect of the formal and informa environmental regulation on green M&As.Meanwhile,the paper divides formal environmental regulation in two parts:market-based regulation and command-control regulation.Different types of environmental regulations have different effects on green M&As.When making relevant environmental regulations,decision makers should rationally design the form of environmental regulation,grasp the intensity of environmental regulation,and achieve the coordinated development of enterprise growth and environmental protection.Third,the research in this paper enriches the related research of "managers'environmental characteristics to corporate behavior".First of all,executives' environmental awareness has a significant impact on corporate environmental decision-making.However,there is a difficulty in measuring the environmental awareness of executives.There are few studies on the relationship between them.Environmental information disclosure in a certain extent reflects the degree of executives' awareness of environmental protection.It is a kind of corporate environmental behavior So,through collecting the environmental protection information according to the annual report,the paper measures the degree of CEO's environmental awareness.CEO environmental awareness is the intrinsic mechanism to implement environmental protection policy.Secondly,CEO's experience of environmental protection is also an important inducement factor for enterprises to initiate green M&As.CEO with environmental protection experience has information superiority on national policy,market and technology.Therefore,the study of the impact of the environmental awareness of CEO and the environmental protection experience of CEO on the environmental protection behavior is an important supplement to the current related research.Fourth,the research in this paper enriches the related research on M&As premium.M&As premium is the core issue in the process of M&As,making a reasonable price of M&As influences the success of M&A deal.The paper proves the existence of green M&As premium from two aspects of asset evaluation premium and control transfer premium.Meanwhile,property rights and the support of national policies have a moderating effect on the premium.Fifth,the research of this paper evaluates the economic performance and social responsibility performace of M&A from the perspective of industry characteristics.In terms of economic performance,the research findings in this paper confirm the value of green M&As,that is,green M&As can enhance the performance and it explains the "M&A Paradox" from the perspective of industry characteristics.In the aspects of social performance,the conclusions of this paper prove instrumental stakeholder theory.The implementation of green M&As is to reduce the public anger and maintain the enterprise positive image and reputation,but in fact,green M&As do not enhance the social responsibility performance. |
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