Managerial overconfidence, debt capacity and merger & acquisition premium

Purpose - Based on the perspective of cognitive psychology, this paper takes the M&A events of Chinese A-share listed enterprises from 2008 to 2015 as the research samples, and then empirically analyzes the influence of managerial overconfidence on M&A premium under the special circumstances in China and tests the moderating effect of debt capacity between managerial overconfidence and M&A premium. Design/methodology/approach - This paper selects the M&A events of all A-share listed enterprises from 2008 to 2015 as the total samples. In view of the fact that the data in this paper are unbalanced panel data, so this paper uses the LR test, LR test and Hausman test to filter the mixed OLS model, fixed effect model and random effect model. Finally, using the random effect model for empirical testing reduces the endogeneity of the model. Findings - The study shows that managerial overconfidence is positively correlated with M&A premium; at the same time, compared with the state-owned enterprises, the relationship between managerial overconfidence and M&A premium is more significant in private enterprises. Further study shows that debt capacity can strengthen the relationship between managerial overconfidence and M&A premium, to be specific, the larger the debt capacity is, the stronger the positive relationship between managerial overconfidence and M&A premium will be. Moreover, after considering the influence of agency cost and financing expense, and conducting endogenous test and robust test, this research’s conclusions remain the same. Research limitations/implications - This research also has some limitations. Some M&A announcements are incomplete, and the target has more information missing, resulting in a decrease in the number of samples, which may affect the accuracy of the conclusions. This paper does not address the research of the economic consequences of M&A, namely, the impact of managerial overconfidence and debt capacity on M&A performance. This is one of the future research directions for this paper. Practical implications - The conclusions of this paper provide new theory evidence for Chinese enterprises' M&A decision-making. Social implications - First, enterprises should gradually improve corporate governance structure and governance mechanisms to guide more stakeholders to participate in corporate governance, and also they should strengthen the pre-evaluation, in-process control and post-supervision of managers' behavioral decisions to prevent irrational M&A caused by managerial overconfidence. Especially in private enterprises, this issue should be paid more attention. Second, enterprises should make full use of the debt governance function of creditors and improve the creditors' supervision mechanism for managers' decision-making behavior. Originality/value - The innovation value and increment contribution of this paper may include the following aspects: the conclusions of this paper expand the research boundary of the relationship between managerial overconfidence and M&A premium, and enrich related literature about debt capacity and the influence of debt capacity on M&A decision-making, and also provide new theory evidence for Chinese enterprises' M&A decision-making. In a word, this research is a beneficial supplement and extension for existing research.