| Abstract [eng] |
Summary Global M&A activity has grown dramatically in value and volume, and to thrive in a post-pandemic world, companies need to look beyond traditional perspectives and consider sustainability issues. Sustainability can contribute to improving a company's performance, and is linked to the recognition of the importance of governance and social responsibility and to compliance with increasingly stringent environmental regulations. This is an area of increasing relevance as the number of mergers and acquisitions transactions increases, but not all transactions are successful or create financial value, and therefore there is a need to examine corporate sustainability and its impact on corporate financial performance. The research problem is: what is the impact of corporate sustainability on M&A transactions? The object of the study is the impact of corporate sustainability on M&A transactions. The objective of the study is to investigate the impact of corporate sustainability on M&A transactions. Objectives of the study: 1. to shed light on the importance of corporate sustainability for M&A transactions; 2. to provide a theoretical basis for the impact of corporate sustainability on M&A transactions; 3. to develop a research methodology for the study of sustainability in the context of M&A transactions; 4. to empirically investigate the impact of the sustainability of firms in the industrial sector on their M&A transactions. Research methods: scientific literature analysis, comparative and statistical data analysis, regression analysis. Based on the analysis of the problem in the first part shows, that M&A transactions and corporate sustainability reconcile the financial and societal interests of companies, which have a positive impact on their financial performance. The second part concentrated on the academic literature and finds that the impact of corporate sustainability contributes to increasing operational efficiency, improving reputation, engaging stakeholders and reducing irresponsible consumption of resources, which leads to an increase of the financial performance of M&A transactions. The methodological part describes the conduct of the study, the choice of the sample and the variables to be used to measure the financial performance, the regression models. The fourth part of the paper conducts an empirical study using M&A transactions in 28 industrial sectors between 2009 and 2019. The empirical study is limited by the publicity and availability of data. The financial and sustainability data on M&A transactions were used from the Bloomberg database. Comparative and regression analyses of the financial ratios showed that the sustainability factors of M&A transactions in the industrial sector have an impact on firms' financial performance. The analysis of the significance of the financial ratios shows that the results for market capitalization, Tobin's Q and share price to book value ratio of industrial companies are positively statistically significant with ESG sustainability scores. These results confirm that sustainability-oriented companies make value-creating decisions in M&A transactions, as the market reacts positively to such acquisitions. Of the ESG scores, governance sustainability scores have the greatest impact on the financial performance of M&A transactions, while ESG scores also influence the choice of target companies. |
