The Influence of Cross-Border M&A Performance on Customer Concentration

As the scale of overseas mergers and acquisitions (M&A) by Chinese firms expands, the associated risks and impacts have gradually become a central research focus. Existing literature mostly focuse on the financial performance of M&As, but it often lacks a dynamic examination of customer structure risk. Based on a sample of 2195 cross-border M&A transactions involving A-share listed companies from 2005 to 2022, this article empirically analyses the dynamic risk transmission mechanism of cross-border M&A performance on customer concentration by using the accounting research method and constructing a dynamic regression model based on the return on assets (ROA) to measure M&A performance. The study finds that although ROA has no direct effect on customer concentration in the year of M&A (=0.055, p=0.313), its negative effect gradually emerges over time, suggesting a significant lag between performance improvement and customer structure optimisation. Furthermore, the impact on customer concentration varies depending on the type of crossborder M&A. This study reveals the dynamic impact of performance risk on customer concentration, which provides empirical evidence for firms to optimise their M&A decisions and reduce the risk of customer churn. Future research needs to incorporate more control variables (e.g., host country's economic level, M&A type) and improve the test of the dynamic relationship to enhance the explanatory power of the model.