Firms can use cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M 14 overlapping cases). Deal values were reported for 139 of 140 domestic transactions but for only 38 of 69 cross-border transactions. Given this pronounced imbalance, we employ Firth penalized logistic regression. Cross-border status is consistently associated with a lower likelihood of deal-value reporting, including in models that control for lagged acquirer size, profitability, and leverage obtained from OpenDART. Within the cross-border subsample, transition relevance is negatively associated with deal-value reporting in the baseline model, but the relationship weakens after financial controls are included. The findings therefore reveal a robust cross-border transparency gap, whereas the evidence concerning environmental-transition targets remains suggestive and sensitive to measurement and model specification. Boards and regulators should strengthen valuation documentation and governance oversight in cross-border acquisitions and use taxonomy-based screens as due-diligence tools rather than as evidence of ESG performance.
Cho et al. (Tue,) studied this question.