ESG Performance and the Covid-19 Pandemic, Importance for Acquirers

Abstract

This research aims to study the impact of ESG performance of acquirers on short-term M&A performance by regressing acquirers’ announcement CARs against acquirers’ ESG scores, as well as ESG pillar scores and a set of control variables for 5718 deals announced between 2015 and 2022. Furthermore, this study evinces the influence of the Covid-19 pandemic on this relationship. The results indicate that acquirers’ ESG performance negatively influence short-term M&A performance and that the Covid-19 pandemic did not influence this relationship. This effect is attributable to the Social score, while Environmental and Governance scores did not have a significant impact. On the other hand, the Covid-19 pandemic had significant positive influence on the impact of acquirers’ Social scores and a significant negative influence on the impact of acquirers’ Environmental scores. This indicates that during the covid-19 pandemic, investors assessed Environmental and Social scores differently regarding their investment behaviour in acquiring companies around the announcement of the deal compared to before the Covid-19 pandemic.