Japanese firms' overpayments for cross-border acquisitions

Abstract

U.S. and European research suggests that firms tend to overpay when acquiring cross-border targets. Our research focuses on an Asian setting. We find that Japanese acquirers pay significantly higher premiums for cross-border targets than for domestic ones. We also find that, in the case of acquisitions of domestic firms, acquirers that are laden with debt or that have higher market-to-book ratios (which signals their attractiveness) pay lower premiums. By contrast, we find that in the case of cross-border acquisitions, neither variable has a significant impact on premiums, which suggests that premiums are not set efficiently for cross-border acquisitions.