Socially responsible firms and mergers and acquisitions performance: Australian evidence

This paper extends our knowledge of acquisition decisions by examining whether a firm's corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities influence Merger and Acquisition (M&A) deal characteristics, target choice and acquisition performance. Our empirical results reveal several new insights. First, we find that targets with CSR activities are more likely to be acquired by CSR-oriented bidder firms. Second, we also examine the deal characteristics of CSR firms and find that they choose deal features such as cash payment, domestic targets, and single bids. Third, we show that socially responsible firms are more likely to pay a lower bid premium when they pay for acquisitions. Finally, we find that the announcement period abnormal return is positive and significant when CSR-oriented bidding firms announce an acquisition decision in the market. Overall, we show that CSR firms make acquisition decisions which align shareholders with other stakeholders of the firm. Our results are robust to a number of alternative proxies and sensitivity tests.