The impact of political freedoms on cross-border M&A abandonment likelihood

This study aims to provide evidence of the impact of political factors of acquirer’s and target’s countries and their differences on cross-border merger and acquisition (M&A) abandonment likelihood, showing that political differences have a more pronounced impact on M&A abandonment likelihood compared with social or cultural differences. We analyse a large cross-border M&A data sample under a probit regression, using target’s and acquirer’s score as well as score differences computed using the sum of squared differences. The results show that while analyzed target’s political factors don’t seem to have a statistically significant impact on M&A likelihood, level of efficiency and quality of government’s core institutions as well as political culture in acquirer’s country have statistically significant impact on M&A abandonment likelihood with the first having a greater marginal effect on the M&A abandonment likelihood than the second. We also document that political culture differences between acquirer’s and target’s countries have a greater explanatory power for M&A abandonment likelihood than the difference between acquirer’s and target’s Hofstede’s cultural dimension scores. This is true both in statistical and marginal terms, with the indulgence cultural dimension being the only statistically significant variable impacting M&A abandonment likelihood. These findings represent a useful groundwork for economists, corporate finance specialists, academic scholars and practitioners, potentially allowing for a better understanding of the underlying impact of political culture and the functioning of the acquirer’s and target’s country government on M&A deal outcome.