Cross-Border Mergers and Acquisitions and the Role of Free Trade Agreements

This article investigates the impact of the formation of free trade agreements (FTAs) on cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Using the comprehensive M&As dataset of Securities Data Company, we find that FTA relationship is associated with more bilateral cross-border M&As. Second, the cross-border M&As activities between a FTA country-pair do not increase faster than the acquiring country’s total foreign acquisitions, suggesting no evidence of investment diversion effect of FTA. Third, we find that existing FTA relationship with other countries positively affect cross-border M&As between a FTA country-pair. But these third-country FTA effects differ for acquiring country and target country when we look at the ratio of a country-pair’s FTA relative to the acquiring country’s total foreign M&As. Moreover, by exploring the detailed information on acquiring and target firms, we reveal that the effect of FTA differs for horizontal, vertical and conglomerate cross-border M&As. Our results are robust to various measures of M&As activities and econometric methods used.