高管薪酬外部公平性、机构投资者与并购溢价

External Fairness of Executive Compensation, Institutional Investor and M&A Premium

本文探究了薪酬激励公平与否是影响高管并购决策的重要因素。本文使用2008-2018年并购数据,研究高管薪酬外部公平性对并购溢价决策的影响,并考察机构投资者在其中的调节作用。研究发现:高管薪酬外部公平性越低,企业并购溢价越高;机构投资者可以预先识别高管薪酬外部不公平状态,从而对高溢价决策做出防范,能够有效抑制高管薪酬外部不公平对并购溢价的推动作用。机理检验发现,薪酬外部不公平诱发的高管心理感知降低了其工作积极性,并促使其利用高溢价并购寻求替代性补偿激励。进一步检验表明,高管薪酬外部不公平对并购溢价的推动作用在高管任期较长和声誉较低的企业更为明显。本文从高管心理公平感知的视角丰富了并购溢价驱动因素的相关研究,增加了机构投资者具有积极治理作用的证据,也为企业采取相应措施降低并购溢价风险提供了决策参考。

The high M&A premium is the main factors that induce the huge impairment of listed companies’goodwill and the plummeting performance.Executives are the decision makers of M&As,and their decision-making process is inevitably affected by the psychological factors.When the executives’actual salary is lower than the social comparison benchmark,they will have unfair psychological feelings,and then try to restore fairness through a series of negative actions that deviate from the interests of shareholders.Valuation and pricing are the core of M&A transactions,and the content involved is complex,so it is easy for executives to manipulate M&A prices to eliminate feelings of unfairness.In recent years,institutional investors have become an important external force that can affect the governance of listed companies.Institutional investors can identify the external unfair status of executive compensation in advance,prevent high premium decisions in a timely manner and effectively alleviate the promotion of M&As premiums by executives who are under unfair pay.Therefore,institutional investors have a moderating effect on the relationship between external fairness of compensation and M&A premium.This paper uses the M&A data in 2008-2018 to study the impact of external fairness of executive compensation on M&A premium,and examine the moderate role of institutional investors.The results show that the lower the external fairness of executive compensation,the greater the M&A premium.Institutional investors can effectively reduce the impact of external compensation unfairness on M&A premiums.The mechanism tests show that executives’psychological perception of fairness induced by external unfairness reduces their motivation to work,and prompts them to use high premium to seek alternative compensation incentives.Further examinations of executive characteristics and corporate characteristics show that the role of external unfairness in executive compensation in driving M&A premiums is more pronounced in companies with longer executive tenure,weaker executive reputation incentives,and private status.This article enriches the research on the pre-factors of M&A premiums from the perspective of executives’psychological perception of fairness,provides evidence that institutional investors play a positive governance role,and provides decision-making references for companies to take corresponding measures to reduce M&A premium risks.