Corporate control and M&A activity: the role of the largest shareholder’s voting stake
研究发现最大股东投票权与并购可能性负相关，大股东因投资组合不分散而风险规避，积极监督管理层减少低效投资，导致并购活动降低。
This study finds a negative relationship between the voting stake of the largest shareholder and M&A likelihood, utilizing a large sample of 814 publicly listed firms. We argue that large shareholders hold hardly diversified portfolios and are therefore often very risk-averse and actively monitor management to prevent inefficient investments, resulting in lower acquisition activity. Results further indicate that family firms do not deviate from non-family firms in their acquisition behavior, which contradicts the socioemotional wealth theory. Overall, our main contribution is to provide evidence that the reintroduction of multiple-vote shares proposed by the European Commission in 2022 may lead to a decrease in M&A activity and thus hinder economic growth.