The Impact of Corporate Digitalization on Cross-border Mergers and Acquisitions Performance in Chinese Listed Companies

. Under the inﬂuence of the “going out” strategy and the Belt and Road Initiative, China has been accelerating its process of globalization. Based on a sample of 123 cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&A) cases launched by Chinese listed companies from 2012 to 2019, this paper empirically studied the impact of corporate digitalization on cross-border M&A performance. The regression results showed that corporate digitalization promoted both short-term and long-term cross-border M&A performance, especially when the acquiring company was a high-tech company. In non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs), corporate digitalization promoted short-term cross-border M&A performance more signiﬁcantly, while in SOEs the positive impact was more signiﬁcant on long-term cross-border M&A performance. Furthermore, internal control quality strengthened the role of corporate digitalization on short-term performance of the acquiring company after cross-border M&A, while it negatively moderated the correlation between corporate digitalization and long-term performance of the acquiring company after cross-border M&A. This study provided some implications for ﬁrms on how to promote their cross-border M&A performance and references for the government’s innovation encouragement policy and the “going out” strategy.


Introduction
The rise of the digital economy has had a profound impact on the international investment path, making international investment show the characteristics of light overseas capitalization. Therefore, cross-border M&A has become the main driving force for global foreign direct investment (FDI) flows, while green space investment, especially productive investment, has been in a long-term downturn. Through cross-border M&A, companies can quickly acquire strategic assets and new knowledge about market demand and technology [1], thus enhancing international and domestic competitiveness and quickly overcoming entry barriers to operate locally [2]. Although the cross-border M&A cases launched by Chinese enterprises accounted for 47%of global M&As in 2016, financial performance of these acquiring companies was not ideal. According to McKinsey 's report, about 60 per cent of cross-border M&A transactions by Chinese companies over the past decade have failed to meet targets set by both parties. Therefore, how to effectively improve cross-border M&A performance of Chinese enterprises has become a problem to be settled in current academic circles and enterprise practice, and in-depth study of the specific influencing factors of cross-border M&A performance is of great significance for this problem. While previous studies have provided abundant country-level and company-level evidence on the factors influencing cross-border M&A performance [3][4][5], little has been written about corporate digitalization which has been affecting the whole process of enterprises' operation.
The core of corporate digitalization is the application of digital technology in daily business activities to help enterprises make decisions by collecting data, processing information, and etc [6]. The report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China pointed out that it is necessary to promote the deep integration of the Internet, big data, artificial intelligence with the real economy. As to the impact of digitization on FDI, most scholars have mainly studied the impact of digitization on the completion of FDI from a macro perspective, such as the number of completed FDI cases, completion efficiency and investment location selection. Backer and Flaig (2017) [7] argued that in cross-border M&A, acquiring companies would consider domestic technological factors and tend to invest in countries with better digital infrastructure. Similarly, Gharagozloo et al.(2022) [8] found that a country's digital readiness helped it attract capital flows through increased international mergers and acquisitions (IMA). However, in the UNCTAD 2017 report on global investment, it was pointed out that the digital economy could reconstruct international production, create new market entry channels, and apply new governance models and cooperation mechanisms, which would to some extent weaken FDI of enterprises seeking market and efficiency. Banalieva and Dhanaraj (2019) [9] also found that because the development of digital technology enabled multinational enterprises to transcend the real economy and participate in the international market division of labor, digitization will reduce FDI. For the financial performance of enterprises, corporate digitalization enables enterprises to make better use of Internet technology to reduce operating costs, improve innovation capabilities [10], and achieve differentiated competition in the market [11], thereby significantly improving corporate performance. However, there is little research on the impact of digitization on enterprises' performance after FDI.
Based on a sample of 123 cross-border M&A transactions launched by Chinese listed companies from 2012 to 2019, this paper investigated the relationship between corporate digitalization and corporate cross-border M&A performance as well as the moderating role of internal control quality. The findings suggested that corporate digitalization significantly promoted both short-term and long-term cross-border M&A performance, and that internal control quality positively moderated the correlations. Supplementary studies showed that the positive effects of corporate digitalization on cross-border M&A performance were more significant when the acquiring company was a high-tech company. In non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs), corporate digitalization promoted short-term cross-border M&A performance more significantly, while in SOEs the positive impact was more significant on longterm cross-border M&A performance.
This study contributed to existing literature as follows: First, cross-border M&A cases over the past eight years of Chinese listed companies were selected as the sample, while prior studies typically examined the impact of digitalization on the completion of cross-border M&A. Second, this study examined corporate digitalization and cross-border M&A performance from micro perspective, while prior studies mainly focused on the research of digital economy development from a macro perspective. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2 introduces related research and the hypotheses; Section 3 describes the data, variables and model construction; Section 4 presents the empirical results and analysis; Section 5 presents the robustness check results and analysis; Section 6 presents the supplementary studies; Section 7 provides a brief summary of the study.

Literature and Hypotheses
The performance of cross-border M&A depends largely on the success of post-merger integration [12] , and the realization of M&A value mainly comes from post-merger integration. Zhang et al.(2015) [13] proposed that cross-border M&A integration involved human resource integration, cultural integration, organizational structure integration and business process integration. Corporate digitalization has had a profound impact on every aspect of enterprise management, thus playing an important role in the realization of the above integrations.
In the integration of human resources, the application of digitalization not only connects previously discrete objects, people and activities, making management more convenient [14], but also improves the efficiency of technology, capital, and talent utilization, corrects resource mismatches, and makes HRM more accurate through customized management [15]. As cross-border M&A is the diversified expansion of enterprises to break through geographical restrictions, the differences in values and cultural traditions between the two countries will inevitably have an impact on the efficiency and performance of M&A. The related technologies brought about by corporate digitalization (including the Internet, Internet of Things, big data, etc.) have broadened the breadth and depth of enterprises' access to information, broken through the limitations of geographical distance, helped to reduce the negative impact of information asymmetry [16], strove for time to improve their institutional and cultural adaptability, thus ensuring the realization of cross-border M&A performance [17]. In terms of organizational structure integration, enterprises regard digitization as a springboard to enhance the dynamic capabilities of the organization and empower the organizational structure. By promoting organizational resilience [18], digitalization improves the ability of enterprises to withstand the disruption of organizational production and operation and adapt to the new risk environment [19], thus helping enterprises to actively adjust, update and reconstruct the organizational structure at a time of crisis [20]. Besides, the introduction of digital technology will promote a series of internal management model changes such as enterprise organizational structure, marketing, production and R&D. Digitalization and related technologies have promoted the optimization of enterprise operation systems and improved operational efficiency, meanwhile, it provides opportunities for restructuring organizational structure and business processes, reshaping supply chain relationships, etc. [21], which profoundly affects the ability of enterprise business process integration.
In summary, corporate digitalization will promote the integration of human resources, cultural integration, organizational structure integration and business process integration after cross-border M&A, thus improving cross-border M&A performance. Therefore, the above discussion gives rise to the following hypothesis: Hypothesis 1. Corporate digitalization is positively correlated with cross-border M&A performance.
Compared with domestic M&A, cross-border M&A is faced with a higher degree of information asymmetry, so there are higher information risks and post-merger integration risks.
In addition to understanding the information of the acquired enterprise itself, enterprises also need to understand the political system and cultural differences in their regions. High-quality internal control can not only effectively evaluate, avoid and control risks before M&As [22], but also promote internal information communication to fully transmit the business risks of the acquired to the acquiring company in time and provide references for the management to formulate development strategies and arrange personnel appointments, so as to improve cross-border M&A performance [23]. In addition, high-quality internal control can improve cross-border M&A performance by improving the supervision effect of the board of directors on the management [24] and reducing the excessive premium paid by the management to seek their own interests and overconfidence in transactions [25].
In the information era, with the increasing risks faced by enterprises, the importance of internal control is becoming more and more obvious. However, as the internal control elements of enterprises are affected by the information environment, the traditional methods cannot meet the requirements of internal control by the enterprises [26]. The integration of digital technology into the management process of enterprises will change the way of internal and external connection of enterprises, realize the system interconnection and data interconnection of management and decision-making system, and give birth to a new organizational structure of enterprise management [27], which puts forward new requirements and brings challenges to the internal control of enterprises. In the beginning stage of corporate digitalization, high-quality internal control can ensure the smooth implementation of corporate digitalization and cope with the internal management changes and challenges brought by it, while weak internal control system may hinder the process of corporate digitalization. Therefore, the role of corporate digitalization in the short-term performance of the acquiring company is more prominent when internal control is of high quality. The above discussion gives rise to the following hypothesis: Hypothesis 2. Internal control quality positively moderates the correlation between corporate digitalization and short-term performance of the acquiring company after cross-border M&A.
Internal control quality also has direct impact on cross-border M&A performance. Yang and Sun (2014) [28] proposed that high-quality internal control improved cross-border M&A performance by reducing the risks in cross-border M&As. Therefore, weak internal control may constitute a major obstacle to cross-border M&A performance. However, corporate digitalization will improve the quality of internal control in the long run. Digitalization integrates all workplaces in the enterprise into an information network, and the collection, analysis, and access of information related to management activities are integrated into a unified software environment [29]. Visual data workflows, IT governance, and data mining greatly increase the information transparency of business decisions [30]. Cross-border M&A decisions are generally dominated by senior management. Higher information transparency can greatly improve the quality of supervision, ensure higher management efficiency and make management behavior increase shareholder value, therefore improving cross-border M&A performance. The above discussion gives rise to the following hypothesis: Hypothesis 3. internal control quality negatively moderates the correlation between corporate digitalization and long-term performance of the acquiring company after cross-border M&A.

Sample and Data Source
Data on cross-border M&As in this study were taken from the China Stock Market and Accounting Research (CSMAR) Database. Specifically, the M&A transactions by Chinese listed companies from 2012 to 2019 were extracted as the sample under the following guidelines: the M&A deals were completed and the targets were company outside China (including Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan); financial industry, affiliated transactions, individual cross-border M&A transactions, ST and ST* companies were excluded from the sample; cross-border M&A transactions in tax havens such as Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands were excluded from the sample; the one with the largest transaction amount was kept if a company has two or more cross-border M&A transactions within the same year; observations with missing data on any of the variables were also deleted. The sample ended in 2019 because of the availability of long-term performance indicator data. The measurement of corporate digitalization was based on annual reports of enterprises, which were obtained by Python crawling and the internal control index was taken from the Shenzhen DIB Data Research Center. The final sample included 108 companies and 123 company-year observations between 2012 and 2019. The institutional distance (ID) was calculated using data from the Heritage Foundation Website. To mitigate the undue influences of outliers, the continuous variables that fell at the top and bottom 1% were winsorized.

(1) Dependent variable (CAR and Y)
To measure the M&A activity effect on the short-term performance of the acquiring company, this study used the event study method to calculate the cumulative abnormal returns (CARs). First, the deal announcement date of the cross-border M&A was set as the event date (t = 0) and formula (1) was used to estimate the OLS values of parameters (α i and β i ) in model (2) based on data from the estimation period of [-260, -20] [31]. (1) In formula (1), R i,t was the return rate of common shares of company i on day t, R mt was the corresponding market index return rate, and was error. Then, the estimated model (2) was used to forecast the return rate for each acquiring company, whereR i,t was the forecasted rate of return, and α i and β i were the OLS values of parameters estimated. After that, in the event window period [-5,5] [31], the daily abnormal returns of individual stocks were calculated by the formula (3). Finally, formula (4) was used to calculate the cumulative abnormal return (CAR i ) of company i during the event window.
For the measurement of long-term performance of cross-border M&A, the Difference in Difference method was used to investigate the performance of the prior year (Y −1 ), the current year of cross-border M&A (Y 0 ), 1 year (Y 1 ) and 2 years after cross-border M&A (Y 2 ). Referring to the practice of Cai and Sevilir (2012) [32] and Hu and Han (2017) [33], earnings per share (EPS) was selected and industry annual average of EPS was subtracted to eliminate the impact of the industry. Then, Y 0 − Y −1 was obtained by subtracting the performance of the current year from the corresponding performance of the prior year, and Y 1 − Y −1 and Y 2 − Y −1 were obtained by the same method. Finally, the average was calculated to measure the long-term performance of cross-border M&A. Algebraically:  [34], the digitalization keyword lexicon was constructed by using related key words about artificial intelligence technology, big data technology, cloud computing technology, blockchain technology and digital technology application, which was shown in table 1. Based on Python text analysis technology, the annual report contents of listed companies were searched, matched and word frequency counted according to the feature words in the lexicon, and the total word frequency of all keywords was used to measure corporate digitalization. Since the obtained data were distributed as a skewed distribution, to reduce the model estimation error, logarithm for (the word frequency +1) was taken as the measurement of corporate digitalization.

Model Construction
To examine the impact of corporate digitalization on cross-border M&A performance, the following regression models were constructed: Where CAR i,t was the short-term cross-border M&A performance of enterprises, was the long-term cross-border M&A performance, digital i,t was the measurement of corpo-  (7) and the model (8) were estimated using OLS regression and positive coefficients (α 1 > 0, β 1 > 0) of digital i,t were expected based on Hypothesis 1. As internal control quality possibly changed the relationship between corporate digitalization and cross-border M&A performance, the variable and its interaction with digital i,t 2 ( internalcontrol i,t × digital i,t 2 ) were introduced into model (7), similarly the variable internalcontrol i,t * = ln internalcontrol i,t × 1000 and its interaction with digital i,t 2 ( internalcontrol i,t × digital i,t 2 ) were introduced into model (8): 4 Empirical Evidence

Summary Statistics
The descriptive statistical results of the main variables are shown in table 3. From the total sample, the mean value of short-term performance (CAR) of cross-border M&A was 0.0153, indicating that the cumulative abnormal returns of 5 days before and after the M&A announcement date were 1.53 %. The mean of long-term performance (Y) was negative, indicating that there is a period of integration after cross-border M&A, during which the performance deteriorated. The statistical results of corporate digitalization (digital) show that the average value was 2.895, and the minimum and maximum values were 0 and 5.869 respectively, indicating that there was a large gap in corporate digitalization among sample companies.

Regression Results
Model (7) and model (8) were run to test Hypothesis 1 and the regression results are shown in table4. In column (1), the result without control variables and fixed effects controlled shows that the coefficient between corporate digitalization and the short-term performance of cross-border M&A was 0.073, which was positive and statistically significant at the 1% level,  indicating that corporate digitalization improved the short-term performance of cross-border M&A. Column (2) and column (3) show the regression results with control variables and fixed effects controlled. Although the regression coefficient has been reduced to 0.072 and 0.066, this may be due to the absorption of some factors affecting the short-term performance after the inclusion of control variables, the significance remains unchanged. Similarly, after considering the control variables and fixed effects, the coefficient between corporate digitalization and the long-term performance of cross-border M&A was also positive and statistically significant at the 1% level, indicating that corporate digitalization improved the long-term performance of cross-border M&A. Therefore, it was concluded from table 4 that the higher the level of corporate digitalization, the higher the short and long term performance of the acquiring company, which supported H1.
Model (9) and model (10) were run to test Hypothesis 2 and Hypothesis 3 respectively, the results are shown in table 5. In column (1) and column (2), after introducing moderating variable and its interaction with digital 2 , digital 2 the coefficients were still positive and statistically significant at the 1% level, the internalcontrol coefficients were positive and statistically significant at the level of 1 % and 5 % respectively, and the interaction terms were both positive and statistically significant at the 1% level, indicating that internal control quality positively moderated the relationship between corporate digitalization and the short-term performance of the acquiring company, which supported H2.
Similarly, column (3) and column (4) show the digital 2 coefficients were positive and statistically significant at the level of 1 % and 5 % respectively, the internalcontrol* coefficients were both positive and statistically significant at the 1% level, but the interaction terms were both negative and statistically significant at the 1 level, indicating that internal control quality positively moderated the relationship between corporate digitalization and the short-term performance of the acquiring company that internal control quality negatively moderated the relationship between corporate digitalization and the long-term performance of the acquiring company, which supported H3.

Endogenous Check
Although this study introduced the influencing factors of cross-border M&A performance from both macro and micro aspects in the control variables, it is difficult to control all the influencing factors, so there may be errors caused by missing variables. In this regard, the instrumental variable (IV) method was used to solve the possible problem of missing variables. Following Xian and He (2022) [37], the industry average of corporate digitalization (digital_ind) was introduced as the instrumental variable as corporate digitalization will be affected by relevant industry support policies and industry spillover effects. 2SLS regression was used and fixed effect of industry and year were controlled. The industry average of corporate digitalization can reflect the current situation of corporate digitalization, and it will not directly affect the company's performance forecast, therefore, the instrumental variable meets both relevance and endogenous requirements. The regression results are shown in column (5) and (6) of table 6. In column (5), the regression coefficient between digital_ind and digital was 24.016, which was statistically significant at the 1% confidence level, indicating that there was a strong correlation between the instrumental variable and the endogenous explanatory variable. The regression result in column (6) shows that the regression coefficient of digital and Y was 0.749, which was significant at the 1 % confidence level. In the model, Prob > chi2 = 0.0171, which is significant at the 5 % confidence level. Therefore, the positive impact of corporate digitalization on cross-border M&A performance forecast is still significant.

Replacement of Explanatory Variables
In order to test the robustness of the impact of corporate digitalization on short-term performance of the acquiring company, the event window period was changed from (-5,5) to (-3,3) to obtain CAR* to replace the original short-term performance measurement (CAR). In terms of the long-term performance measurement, return on total assets (ROA) was used to replace earnings per share (EPS) and the same treatment was conducted on ROA to measure long-term performance. The regression results with fixed effects of industry and year are shown in table6 column (1), (2), (3) and (4). The results show that the regression coefficients between the corporate digitalization and the short-term performance and long-term performance were both positive and statistically significant at the 1 % confidence level, thus the previous research conclusions were not affected.

Sample Large-scale Enterprises
Corporate digitalization involves the core areas such as strategic transformation and business model change, which is generally dominated by senior management such as CEO. For largescale enterprises, their organizational structure is characterized by more internal management levels, decision-making power concentrated in the senior management, and the existence of organizational structure inertia, which may affect the effectiveness of corporate digitalization. Therefore, the sample was divided by the average size of enterprises into a large-scale enterprise sample and a small-scale enterprise sample. The large-scale enterprise sample was used for OLS regression. The results are shown in table7 column (1), (2) and table8 column (1), (2). The regression results indicated that after considering the influence of enterprise scale, the promotion effects of corporate digitalization on both the short-term and long-term performance of the acquiring company after cross-border M&A were still significant, thus the previous conclusions were not affected.

Eliminating the Impact of Extreme Events
The Chinese stock market crash in 2015 had a great impact on the capital market. The downturn in the market may disrupt the corporate digitalization, and the volatility of the capital market may also affect the stock price of enterprises, thus affecting their short-term and longterm performance. Considering that, the observations in 2015 were removed and the new sample was then used for regression. The results are shown in column (3) and (4) of table7 and column (3) and (4) of table8, which indicated that after excluding the impact of the stock market crash, the positive impact of corporate digitalization on cross-border M&A performance was still significant, thus the previous conclusions were not affected.

Considering the Robustness of Sample Selection
Considering that the economic development of municipalities directly under the central government and the efficiency of information flow were quite different from those of other regions, the sample of the company registered in the municipality was excluded. Following Wu et al. (2021) [34], enterprises registered in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Chongqing were excluded from the sample. The regression results are shown in column (5) and (6) of table7 and column (5) and (6) of table8, which indicated that after considering the influence of special samples, the positive effect of corporate digitalization on cross-border M&A performance was still significant, thus the previous conclusions were not affected.

Nature of Property Rights
H1 results were expected to be different between SOEs and non-SOEs. Due to t more control levels and lower decision-making efficiency of SOEs, the promotion of corporate digitalization in SOEs is slower than that of non-SOEs, therefore corporate digitalization is expected to promote short-term cross-border M&A performance more significantly in non-SOEs. Furthermore, SOEs more emphasize on strategy and their corporate digitalization is a well-thought-out strategic behavior, while non-SOEs tend to pay more attention to obtaining economic profits quickly, so corporate digitalization in SOEs plays a more catalytic role on their long-term performance after cross-border M&A. Table 9 column (1) and table 10 column (1) are the regression results of SOEs. Table 9 column (2) and table 10 column (2) are the regression results of non-SOEs. According to the regression results, in the short term, the positive impact of corporate digitalization on crossborder M&A performance was more significant in non-SOEs. However, in the long run, the positive impact of corporate digitalization on cross-border M&A performance is more significant in SOEs.

Technological Attributes
H1 results were also expected to be different between high-tech enterprises and non-high-tech enterprises. On the one hand, the competitiveness of high-tech enterprises is technological innovation. As an important part of enterprise development and reform, corporate digitalization will inevitably be put into action to continue to maintain their own technological advantages. On the other hand, corporate digitalization requires enterprises to have strong innovation ability. Based on their strong competitiveness of scientific and technological innovation, high-tech enterprises can more effectively implement corporate digitalization and truly apply it to the internal management and business decision-making, which can significantly improve cross-border M&A performance. In contrast, non-high-tech enterprises do not have enough pressure and motivation to implement corporate digitalization due to the lack of sufficient scientific and technological innovation level. Therefore, the corporate digitalization degree of non-high-tech enterprises is relatively low, which cannot bring significant cross-border M&A performance improvement. Table 9 column (3), (4) and table 10 column (3), (4) are regression results for the differences in the characteristics of enterprise science and technology attributes. It was found that in the high-tech enterprise group, the effects of corporate digitalization on both shortterm and long-term performance of the acquiring company were significant (the coefficient is significantly positive and passes the 1 % statistical significance test), while in the non-hightech enterprise group, the regression coefficient of corporate digitalization and short-term performance is only significant at the 5 % confidence level and that of corporate digitalization and long-term performance did not pass the statistical significance test (t value is only 1.55), which indicated that compared with non-high-tech enterprises, corporate digitalization had a more obvious effect on the improvement of cross-border M&A performance. This also confirms the point view of Wu et al. (2021) [34].

Conclusions and Future Prospect
In recent years, with the development of digital economy, corporate digitalization has become an important part of the future sustainable development of enterprises. This paper studied the impact of corporate digitalization on the performance of cross-border M&A. It was found that corporate digitalization improved both the short-term and long-term performance of the acquiring company after cross-border M&A. Internal control quality strengthened the role of corporate digitalization on short-term performance of the acquiring company after crossborder M&A but negatively moderated the correlation between corporate digitalization and long-term performance of the acquiring company after cross-border M&A. Supplementary studies found that in non-SOEs, the positive impact of corporate digitalization on short-term performance was more significant, while in SOEs, the positive impact of corporate digitalization on long-term performance was more significant. Compared with non-high-tech enterprises, corporate digitalization has a more obvious effect on both the short-term and long-term performance of the acquiring company after cross-border M&A.
These findings therefore suggested that Chinese government should take advantage of the opportunity of digital development to guide enterprises to apply digital technology to cross-border M&A transactions and other foreign investment activities, so as to better reduce the risk of information asymmetry in the investment and the risk of integration after investment, thus improving the performance of Chinese enterprises' performance after cross-border M&A. Further, the development of corporate digitalization should be sticked to, and Chinese government should guide the digital development of enterprises differently and develop distinctive digital paths according to the special circumstances of different enterprises. For example, SOEs and non-high-tech enterprises should be more actively guided and encouraged and different corporate digitalization assessment standards should be established for them. In addition, as internal control quality has a significant positive moderating effect between corporate digitalization and cross-border M&A short-term performance, regulatory authorities or industry organizations should actively promote the construction of internal control norms, encourage and help enterprises to establish a sound internal control system. Although the corporate digitalization has improved the effectiveness of internal control to a certain extent, it also puts forward new requirements for internal control of enterprises, such as the increase of internal information system load, the higher requirements for information security and employees' ability. Therefore, the significance of internal control should not be ignored when implementing corporation digitalization. Meanwhile, enterprises implementing cross-border M&A should fully integrate internal control into the whole process of cross-border M&A and give full play to the role of risk identification and control of internal control, thus improving the performance of cross-border M&A.
The shortcoming of this study is that the time span used to measure long-term performance is not long enough. Based on the availability of data, only the performance within two years after cross-border M&A was considered, and the enterprise may still be in the postmerger integration period. Therefore, the performance of the enterprise in this time span may not fully represent the long-term performance of cross-border M&A. Therefore, in the future, the time span could be extended to conduct long-term tracking research on cross-border M&A performance. Furthermore, combining specific industry characteristics of cross-border M&A performance may be considered in the future. The internal and external environment that has the greatest impact on the cross-border M&A includes the industry in which the enterprise itself is located and the industry to be entered. Therefore, the cross-border M&A performance of enterprises will vary with the different M&A industries. When studying a specific industry, the performance brought by cross-border M&A could be more comparable, and the factors affecting the performance of cross-border M&A based on this industry could be more targeted.
Please acknowledge collaborators or anyone who has helped with the paper at the end of the text.