THE IMPACT OF GENDER DIVERSITY ON M&A PROCESS RESULTS

The industry of financial services and investors is characterized by a still low number of female directorships. In 2021, women held 21% of board seats, 19% of C-suite roles, and 5% of CEO positions. So, companies are encouraged to increase the number of female directorships as women are more risk-averse and their participation is considered as a successful device to enhance monitoring and improve the risk oversight, leading to greater resilience of financial institutions. Hence, this study aims at verifying whether female participation in the board of directors might affect the success of merger and acquisition (M&A) operations. In order to do this, a sample of M&A operations over the time window between 2013 and 2022 has been collected, conducted by only Western European acquirers toward worldwide targets. Then, regression analyses have been performed to identify whether the percentage of women in the board affected the results of M&A operations throughout the three phases considered, i.e. pre-merger phase, actual merger and post-merger phase. Empirical results show that companies with a higher percentage of women on the board of directors will perform M&As with a smaller relative transaction size; similarly, the presence of female directors is related to acquisition with a lower premium paid. Lastly, we found evidence of higher post-merger acquisition performance in enterprises with higher percentage of women in the board.