IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecofin/v40y2017icp41-54.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do firms have leverage targets? New evidence from mergers and acquisitions in China

Author

Listed:
  • Tao, Qizhi
  • Sun, Wenjia
  • Zhu, Yingjun
  • Zhang, Ting

Abstract

We provide new and consistent evidence supporting the trade-off theory using China’s mergers and acquisitions (M&A) deals between 2000 and 2015 as a sample. We show that acquirers do have leverage targets and they adjust their leverage ratios toward an optimal level at which the cost and benefit of the debt are equal. In examining the leverage adjustment speed during the post-acquisition period, we find that acquirers partially adjust their leverage ratios to the optimal levels; and the adjustment speed is affected by the adjustment cost proxied by the bankruptcy risk. Finally, we are able to successfully replicate the US evidence which is consistent with the trade-off theory as well using our improved methodology.

Suggested Citation

  • Tao, Qizhi & Sun, Wenjia & Zhu, Yingjun & Zhang, Ting, 2017. "Do firms have leverage targets? New evidence from mergers and acquisitions in China," The North American Journal of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 41-54.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecofin:v:40:y:2017:i:c:p:41-54
    DOI: 10.1016/j.najef.2017.01.004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1062940816301589
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.najef.2017.01.004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hovakimian, Armen & Opler, Tim & Titman, Sheridan, 2001. "The Debt-Equity Choice," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 36(1), pages 1-24, March.
    2. repec:bla:jfinan:v:43:y:1988:i:1:p:1-19 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Ivo Welch, 2004. "Capital Structure and Stock Returns," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(1), pages 106-131, February.
    4. Ghosh, Aloke & Jain, Prem C., 2000. "Financial leverage changes associated with corporate mergers," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 377-402, December.
    5. DeAngelo, Harry & Masulis, Ronald W., 1980. "Optimal capital structure under corporate and personal taxation," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 3-29, March.
    6. Bradley, Michael & Jarrell, Gregg A & Kim, E Han, 1984. "On the Existence of an Optimal Capital Structure: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 39(3), pages 857-878, July.
    7. Harford, Jarrad & Klasa, Sandy & Walcott, Nathan, 2009. "Do firms have leverage targets? Evidence from acquisitions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 1-14, July.
    8. Eugene F. Fama, 2002. "Testing Trade-Off and Pecking Order Predictions About Dividends and Debt," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 15(1), pages 1-33, March.
    9. Aydoğan Alti, 2006. "How Persistent Is the Impact of Market Timing on Capital Structure?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(4), pages 1681-1710, August.
    10. Malcolm Baker & Jeffrey Wurgler, 2002. "Market Timing and Capital Structure," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(1), pages 1-32, February.
    11. Flannery, Mark J. & Rangan, Kasturi P., 2006. "Partial adjustment toward target capital structures," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(3), pages 469-506, March.
    12. repec:bla:jfinan:v:44:y:1989:i:1:p:19-40 is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Myers, Stewart C., 1984. "Capital structure puzzle," Working papers 1548-84., Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
    14. Morellec, Erwan & Zhdanov, Alexei, 2008. "Financing and takeovers," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(3), pages 556-581, March.
    15. Rajan, Raghuram G & Zingales, Luigi, 1995. "What Do We Know about Capital Structure? Some Evidence from International Data," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 50(5), pages 1421-1460, December.
    16. Jensen, Michael C, 1986. "Agency Costs of Free Cash Flow, Corporate Finance, and Takeovers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(2), pages 323-329, May.
    17. Kayhan, Ayla & Titman, Sheridan, 2007. "Firms' histories and their capital structures," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 1-32, January.
    18. Myers, Stewart C, 1984. "The Capital Structure Puzzle," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 39(3), pages 575-592, July.
    19. Ilya A. Strebulaev, 2007. "Do Tests of Capital Structure Theory Mean What They Say?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(4), pages 1747-1787, August.
    20. A. Craig MacKinlay, 1997. "Event Studies in Economics and Finance," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 35(1), pages 13-39, March.
    21. Mark T. Leary & Michael R. Roberts, 2005. "Do Firms Rebalance Their Capital Structures?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 60(6), pages 2575-2619, December.
    22. Stewart C. Myers, 1984. "Capital Structure Puzzle," NBER Working Papers 1393, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    23. Goyal, Vidhan K. & Lehn, Kenneth & Racic, Stanko, 2002. "Growth opportunities and corporate debt policy: the case of the U.S. defense industry," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 35-59, April.
    24. Hovakimian, Armen & Hovakimian, Gayane & Tehranian, Hassan, 2004. "Determinants of target capital structure: The case of dual debt and equity issues," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(3), pages 517-540, March.
    25. Bruner, Robert F., 1988. "The Use of Excess Cash and Debt Capacity as a Motive for Merger," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 23(2), pages 199-217, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ripamonti, Alexandre, 2019. "Capital Structure Adjustments and Asymmetric Information," MPRA Paper 96936, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Gao, Zaihan & Bao, Yue, 2022. "Do acquirers of mega mergers prefer to improve debt level? An investigation on mega deals and leverage change," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 47(PB).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Murray Z. Frank & Vidhan K. Goyal, 2009. "Capital Structure Decisions: Which Factors Are Reliably Important?," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 38(1), pages 1-37, March.
    2. Harford, Jarrad & Klasa, Sandy & Walcott, Nathan, 2009. "Do firms have leverage targets? Evidence from acquisitions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 1-14, July.
    3. Mai, Nhat Chi, 2012. "Market timing, taxes and capital structure: evidence from Vietnam," OSF Preprints t3mvs, Center for Open Science.
    4. Ovtchinnikov, Alexei V., 2010. "Capital structure decisions: Evidence from deregulated industries," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(2), pages 249-274, February.
    5. Viet Anh Dang, 2005. "Testing the Trade-off and Pecking Order Theory: Some UK Evidence," Money Macro and Finance (MMF) Research Group Conference 2005 28, Money Macro and Finance Research Group.
    6. Kayhan, Ayla & Titman, Sheridan, 2007. "Firms' histories and their capital structures," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 1-32, January.
    7. Dang, Viet Anh & Kim, Minjoo & Shin, Yongcheol, 2012. "Asymmetric capital structure adjustments: New evidence from dynamic panel threshold models," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 19(4), pages 465-482.
    8. Bontempi, Maria Elena & Bottazzi, Laura & Golinelli, Roberto, 2020. "A multilevel index of heterogeneous short-term and long-term debt dynamics," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C).
    9. Yildirim, Ramazan & Masih, Mansur & Bacha, Obiyathulla Ismath, 2018. "Determinants of capital structure: evidence from Shari'ah compliant and non-compliant firms," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 198-219.
    10. Elsas, Ralf & Florysiak, David, 2008. "Empirical Capital Structure Research: New Ideas, Recent Evidence, and Methodological Issues," Discussion Papers in Business Administration 4743, University of Munich, Munich School of Management.
    11. Viet Anh Dang, 2011. "Testing Capital Structure Theories Using Error Correction Models: Evidence From The Uk, France And Germany," Post-Print hal-00732527, HAL.
    12. Ruwani Fernando, Jayasuriya Mahapatabendige & Li, Leon & Hou, Greg, 2021. "Heterogeneity in capital structure adjustment revisited: Default versus non-default firms and short versus long time horizon," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 185-204.
    13. Mohamed Soufeljil & Asma Sghaier & Zouhayer Mighri & Hanène Kheireddine, 2017. "The financial structure of the Tunisian listed businesses: an application on panel data," Journal of Global Entrepreneurship Research, Springer;UNESCO Chair in Entrepreneurship, vol. 7(1), pages 1-25, December.
    14. Li, Larry & Islam, Silvia Z., 2019. "Firm and industry specific determinants of capital structure: Evidence from the Australian market," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 425-437.
    15. Rebel A. Cole, 2013. "What Do We Know about the Capital Structure of Privately Held US Firms? Evidence from the Surveys of Small Business Finance," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 42(4), pages 777-813, December.
    16. M. E. Bontempi & L. Bottazzi & R. Golinelli, 2015. "Dynamic corporate capital structure behavior: empirical assessment in the light of heterogeneity and non stationarity," Working Papers wp988, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    17. Amini, Shahram & Elmore, Ryan & Öztekin, Özde & Strauss, Jack, 2021. "Can machines learn capital structure dynamics?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    18. Giorgio Canarella & Stephen M. Miller, 2019. "Determinants of Optimal Capital Structure and Speed of Adjustment: Evidence from the U.S. ICT Sector," Working papers 2019-06, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    19. Shoaib Ali & Attiya Yasmin Javid, 2015. "Relationship between Credit Rating, Capital Structure and Earning Management Behaviour: Evidence from Pakistani Listed Firms," PIDE-Working Papers 2015:121, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics.
    20. Chang, Ya-Kai & Chou, Robin K. & Huang, Tai-Hsin, 2014. "Corporate governance and the dynamics of capital structure: New evidence," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 374-385.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    M&A; Capital structure; Trade-off theory; Adjustment speed;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill
    • G34 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Mergers; Acquisitions; Restructuring; Corporate Governance

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecofin:v:40:y:2017:i:c:p:41-54. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/620163 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.