PurposeThere is little known globally on the association among the independent shareholder, board size and merger and acquisition (M&A) performance. This paper addresses the global issue about cross-border M&A in banking sector, particularly exploring the role of difference in the independent shareholder and board size between acquirer and target banks on synergy gains based on the international study.Design/methodology/approachBased on cross-border bank M&As data on 59 deals from 1995 to 2009, we initially apply social network analysis techniques to explore the country connectedness of the acquirer-target banks in cross-border M&As. Ordinary least squares (OLS) with robust standard errors is further used to investigate synergy gains within the difference in the degree of bank independent shareholder and board sizes between the acquirer and target banks.FindingsOur results indicate that the acquiring banks are generally interconnected with the targeted banks and that some of acquiring banks are clearly concentrated in Asian countries including China, Hong Kong, and Philippines. Moreover, we find that cross-border M&As with larger difference in independent shareholders between the bidder and target bank would result in higher synergy gains in all cases of takeover premiums on 1 day, 1 week and 4 weeks. In addition, financial differences between the bidder and target banks have a significant impact on synergetic gains, a topic not explored in previous studies. There is no evidence that institutional and governance differences between bidder and target bank have significant cross-border impacts on takeover premiums with respect to 1 day, 1 week and 4 weeks, respectively.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the literature by exploring the international issue about the role of difference in the degree of bank independent shareholder and board sizes between acquirer and target banks on synergy gains. Based on bank cross-border M&As data on 59 deals from 1995 to 2009, we initially apply social network analysis to explore the country connectedness of acquirer-target bank in cross-border M&As, while ten ordinary least squares (OLS) with robust standard errors is used to investigate synergy gains within the difference in the degree of bank independent shareholder and board sizes between acquirer and target banks.
