Trapped Cash and the Profitability of Foreign Acquisitions
研究发现，美国跨国公司因税收原因滞留海外的现金越多，其用现金收购外国公司时盈利性越差，表现为公告期回报、持有期回报和资产收益率下降。2004年《美国就业创造法案》降低了这一效应。
Abstract Current U.S. reporting and tax laws create an incentive for some U.S. firms to avoid the repatriation of foreign earnings, as the U.S. government charges additional corporate taxes on these transfers. Prior research suggests that the combined effect of these incentives leads some U.S. multinational corporations to hold a significant amount of cash overseas. In this study, we investigate the effect of cash trapped overseas on U.S. multinational corporations' foreign acquisitions. Consistent with expectations, we observe firms with high levels of trapped cash make less profitable acquisitions of foreign target firms using cash consideration (lower announcement window returns, lower buy and hold returns, decreased ROA ). The American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 (AJCA) reduced this effect by allowing firms to repatriate foreign earnings held as cash abroad at a much lower tax cost. Our study has implications for current proposals to change the tax laws related to foreign earnings.