A Principals-Principals Perspective of Hybrid Leviathans: Cross-Border Acquisitions by State-Owned MNEs

Abstract

We propose a private-government principals-principals approach to understand corporate governance of state-owned multinationals. We explain how the conflicts between large government and private blockholders may affect managerial decisions in the propensity of completing a cross-border acquisition and its dollar value. We argue that conflicts among different blockholders make it difficult to pursue large-scale, cross-border deals because such conflicts may lead to a less coherent objective function and to a rejection of deals that do not satisfy these groups’ conflicting objectives. Finally, we show that such blockholder conflicts are moderated by the salience of the government’s “dual influence” on the firm in question, related to a state’s soft budget constraint and/or diplomatic advantages in countries where the host and the home markets do not enjoy a bilateral investment treaty. Empirically, we found highly supportive evidence based on a global sample of 7,564 cross-border acquisitions between 2004 and 2013.