Hi-Stat img
□ JAPANESE
□ HOME
. Project outline
Organization

Basic Concept

Staff

. Research
Discussion Papers
Database
. Announcements
Workshops
Lecture series
Newsletter
. Links
Hitotsubashi University

Hitotsubashi University Library

Institute of Economic Research

Research Centre for Information and Statistics of Social Science

ASHSTAT Project

Global Economic History Network

Cross-Border Acquisitons and Target Firms' Performance:
Evidence from Japanese Firm-Level Data



Kyoji Fukao, Keikok Ito, Hyeg Ug Kwon and Miho Takizawa


July, 2006


Previous paper Next paper
Abstract
Using Japanese firm-level data for the period from 1994-2002, this paper examines whether a firm is chosen as an acquisition target based on its productivity level, profitability and other characteristics and whether the performance of Japanese firms that were acquired by foreign firms improves after the acquisition. In our previous study for the Japanese manufacturing sector, we found that M&As by foreigners brought a larger and quicker improvement in total factor productivity (TFP) and profit rates than M&As by domestic firms. However, it may argued that firms acquired by foreign firms showed better performance simply because foreign investors acquired more promising Japanese firms than Japanese investors did. In order to address this potential problem of selection bias problem, in this study we combine a difference-in-differences approach with propensity score matching. The basic idea of matching is that we look for firms that were not acquired by foreign firms but had similar characteristics to firms that were acquired by foreigners. Using these firms as control subjects and comparing the acquired firms and the control subjects, we examine whether firms acquired by foreigners show a greater improvement in performance than firms not acquired by foreigners. Both results from unmatched samples and matched samples show that foreign acquisitions improved target firms' productivity and profitability significantly more and quicker than acquisitions by domestic firms. Moreover, we find that there is no positive impact on target firms' profitability in the case of both within-group in-in acquisitions and in-in acquisitions by domestic outsiders. In fact, in the manufacturing sector, the return on assets even deteriorated one year and two years after within-group in-in acquisition, while the TFP growth rate was higher after within-group in-in acquisitions than after in-in acquisitions by outsiders. Our results imply that in the case of within-group in-in acquisitions, parent firms may be trying to quickly restructure acquired firms even at the cost of deteriorating profitability.
Download (1.17MB)
Copyright (C) 2003 by Institute of Economic Research.All rights reserved.