Non-state Shareholder Governance,Environmental Uncertainty And State-owned Enterprise M&A Performance

As the main force of SOE reform,M&A can help SOEs achieve strategic goals such as disposing of backward production capacity,adjusting industrial structure and optimising resource allocation,and its M&A performance can reflect the efficiency and effectiveness of SOEs’ M&A.In recent years,the scale of mergers and acquisitions of state-owned enterprises in China has been expanding,but the overall effect of mergers and acquisitions has not been satisfactory.In the context of the current policy of "making the state-owned economy stronger,better and bigger",the question of how to improve the performance of mergers and acquisitions of state-owned enterprises has become a necessary consideration for the development and growth of state-owned enterprises.Unlike the objectives of state-owned shareholders,non-state-owned shareholders are more concerned with the return on their investment.Then,non-state shareholders entering SOEs may make prudent decisions on SOE M&A projects in order to seek capital appreciation.Non-state shareholder participation in SOE governance is therefore likely to be an important means of improving SOE M&A performance.The environment,as an important influencing factor in corporate activities,also inevitably has an impact on SOE reform and SOE M&A,and it is therefore worth exploring what role it plays in between.Taking A-share state-owned SOE listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2008 to 2021 as a research sample,this paper empirically examines the impact of non-state-owned shareholder governance on the M&A performance of state-owned enterprises from the perspective of non-state-owned shareholder governance equity structure and high-level governance and environmental uncertainty,and verifies the moderating role of environmental uncertainty in it.The conclusions are as follows:(1)the equity checks and balances of non-state-owned shareholders are positively correlated with the M&A performance of state-owned enterprises;(2)Non-state-owned shareholders participate in the governance of state-owned enterprises by appointing directors,which is conducive to improving the performance level of mergers and acquisitions of state-owned enterprises;(3)Environmental uncertainty has a moderating effect,in which the reduction of institutional environment uncertainty will promote the positive correlation between non-state-owned shareholder governance and SOE M&A performance,while the increase of market environment uncertainty will weaken the positive correlation between non-state-owned shareholder governance and SOE M&A performance.Moreover,through heterogeneity analysis,it is found that the role of non-state-owned shareholder governance on the M&A performance of stateowned enterprises is more prominent among local state-owned enterprises and competitive state-owned enterprises.In order to verify the robustness of the research results,the regression results were still robust after using index sensitivity test,lagging independent variable,instrumental variable method,and propensity score matching to alleviate possible endogenous problems in the robustness test part.The innovation of this article lies in the following three aspects:(1)enriching the research on the influencing factors of state-owned enterprise mergers and acquisitions performance,incorporating non-state-owned shareholder governance and environmental uncertainty into the research framework,providing a new perspective for the study of the influencing factors of state-owned enterprise mergers and acquisitions;(2)Expanded research on the governance effects of non-state-owned shareholders,examined the discourse power of non-state-owned shareholders by constructing indicators related to equity balance,appointment of directors,and voting enthusiasm at shareholders’ meetings,and further explored the relationship between equity balance and appointment of directors;(3)It has certain policy reference value,providing empirical evidence for state-owned enterprises to achieve "strengthening,optimizing,and expanding" through mergers and acquisitions in the context of mixed ownership reform,and providing certain policy reference for further improving the institutional design of mixed ownership.