| With the advancement of global economic integration,cross-border M&A has become an important means for enterprises to be active in the world economic stage,and also an important way for Chinese enterprises to explore the international market,seek resources and realize technological upgrading under the strategy of "going out".In recent years,the number and scale of Cross-border mergers and acquisitions of Chinese enterprises have grown rapidly.In 2016,the scale of cross-border mergers and acquisitions of Chinese enterprises ranked first in the world,and the transaction value of cross-border mergers and acquisitions reached 215.794 billion US dollars,an increase of dozens of times compared with the beginning of this century.At the same time,the deepening development of the Belt and Road Initiative and the continuous improvement of various supporting policies have provided a broad platform and excellent opportunities for Chinese enterprises’ cross-border mergers and acquisitions.In 2019,the number of Chinese enterprises’ cross-border mergers and acquisitions in countries along the Belt and Road accounted for 56%of the total number of Chinese enterprises’ cross-border mergers and acquisitions.However,under the influence of many factors such as the uneven level of economic development,different cultural backgrounds and different institutional environments,cross-border M&A is often faced with a high possibility of failure.With the rapid development of digital economy around the world,General Secretary Xi Jinping proposed at the second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in April 2019 that we should seize the opportunities of digital,networked and intelligent development,explore new economic growth drivers and development paths,and build a digital Belt and Road.We will contribute to the high-quality and sustainable development of China’s OFDI under the Belt and Road Initiative.In this context,this paper studies the influence of host country’s digital economy development on Chinese enterprises’ cross-border M&A.First of all,in this paper,the existing related literature in the field of comb,found that the current research mainly for cross-border M&A motivation,M&A performance and M&A risk angle,less study of transnational merger and acquisition success or failure,mainly explores the factors such as system,politics,culture and enterprise property influence on cross-border M&A success or failure,Few studies have taken the development of digital economy as an influencing factor.The research on digital economy at home and abroad mainly focuses on the definition of digital economy and the measurement of digital economy development.The systematic and comprehensive research results are mainly completed by government agencies and international organizations.Secondly this article draw lessons from existing research results,and the digital economy of transnational M&A in two key variables are defined,and introduced in this paper,we study related theory of transnational M&A,based on theory to interpret in combination with the practical application of digital economy,analyzes the digital economic development in the host country for the influence of the transnational merger and acquisition mechanism,accordingly puts forward the hypothesis of this article:The development of the host country’s digital economy can improve the success rate of Chinese enterprises’ cross-border M&A.Thirdly,this paper analyzes the current situation of mergers and acquisitions of Chinese enterprises along the "Belt and Road",and builds an evaluation system for the development level of the host country’s digital economy,and makes a comparative analysis of the development level of the host country’s digital economy.In the context of China’s weakening OFDI momentum in 2016,the number and value of mergers and acquisitions by Chinese enterprises along the Belt and Road showed an inverse growth trend.In 2017,the total value of mergers and acquisitions along the Belt and Road reached a historical record of 36.62 billion dollars.This paper uses principal component analysis to calculate the development level of the host country’s digital economy by taking digital infrastructure construction,institutional guarantee and innovation environment and international competitiveness of digital technology as three first-level indicators and selecting 13 second-level indicators.Through the analysis,four conclusions are drawn:the comprehensive score is polarized,the score fluctuates greatly,the development is not balanced among different regions and the development is not balanced among different countries in the same region.Then,taking the cross-border M&A events of Chinese enterprises in 44 countries along the "Belt and Road" from 2009 to 2019 as samples,the Logit model is constructed to empirically analyze the impact of the host country’s digital economy on Chinese enterprises’ cross-border M&A.The results show that:first,the higher the development level of the host country’s digital economy,the higher the success rate of Chinese enterprises’ cross-border M&A,this conclusion still holds after the robustness test;Second,heterogeneity analysis shows that compared with the sensitive industries,the acquired enterprise belongs to the national defense,telecommunications,the sensitive sectors such as financial and strategic natural resources,low success rate of transnational M&A,this is because the host governments for safeguard national economic security,running smoothly to protect sensitive industries,this will lead to the foreign capital enterprise transnational merger and acquisition,the success rate is reduced.Finally,on the basis of the above theoretical analysis and empirical test,this paper puts forward suggestions to the government:they should actively help Chinese enterprises to obtain the development information of the host country’s digital economy,and help enterprises to reduce the risk of failure from the initial stage of M&A;they will promote the building of the digital Belt and Road and raise the level of development of the overall digital economy.Some suggestions are put forward for Chinese enterprises carrying out cross-border mergers and acquisitions:attach importance to the influence of digital economy development on cross-border mergers and acquisitions,scientifically select the appropriate host country and target enterprises;adhere to the principle of mutual benefit and win-win,choose the right way of communication and coordination to promote the success of M&A.The innovation of this paper is as follows:first,it studies the success or failure of cross-border M&A from a new angle;Second,taking into account the timeliness,availability and effectiveness of data,a new evaluation system is constructed by replacing and adding new indicators,such as total tax rate,on the basis of existing research results,making marginal contributions to the research on measuring the development level of digital economy.However,due to the differences between different acquisition databases,the complete accuracy of sample data cannot be guaranteed. |
