关键词: 并购投资, 企业区位, 公司地理, 区域一体化, 长三角

Abstract:

Cross-border and domestic mergers and acquisitions (M&As) have been playing an increasingly important role in economic globalization, industrial restructuring, and regional integration since the early 1990s. A massive number of M&As has resulted in geographical redistribution of corporate control and economic decision-making power. In contrast to the optimization of locational choice of corporate greenfield investment, the key of M&As could be regarded as the partnering, bargaining, and integration between the acquirer and the target in essence. Therefore, spatiotemporal dynamics of M&As should be investigated or measured in the following aspects: the changing spatial patterns of acquirers and targets, the shifting networks among firms and places engaging in M&As, and the effects of multiple geographical scales and spatial asymmetry. This paper constructs a spatial database of domestic M&As deals in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD). Using GIS, social network and other analytical methods, we aim to discuss the spatiotemporal dynamics of domestic M&As at regional scale (i.e. the YRD) since the mid-1990s. The results show that: (1) The acquirers and targets engaging in M&As presented significant characteristics of spatial co-agglomeration, firms engaging in M&As were mainly distributed in Shanghai and the areas along Shanghai-Nanjing (Hu-Ning) and Shanghai-Hangzhou-Ningbo (Hu-Hang-Yong) routes. The changing spatial patterns of acquirers and targets were gradually differentiated over time. Targets tended to relocate to the peripheral YRD, while acquirers still concentrated in Shanghai and other major cities. (2) City network based on inter-regional M&As has been increasingly expanding to peripheral regions, however, the leading positions of core nodes such as Shanghai, Hangzhou and Nanjing have been intensified. Meanwhile, we found significant spatial asymmetry in the M&As connections between the core and peripheral YRD, as well as metropolises and their neighboring regions. (3) The evolution of spatiotemporal dynamics of domestic M&As in the YRD has gone through three stages: I. Single core and weak network connection; II. Single core, multiple important nodes, and increasingly intensive M&As network connection; III. A complex network structure featured by multi-core and multi-level. Aforementioned descriptive results also indicate that the rapidly increasing domestic M&A activities would be significant for reshaping economic landscape and changing inter-regional relations in transitional China. In addition, this study will contribute to the literature on corporate investment networks and locational modes, and our findings might have further implications for policy-making related to M&As and regional development in transitional China and other emerging economies.

Key words: mergers and acquisitions, firm location, corporate geography, regional integration, the Yangtze River Delta