We examine the way cultural alignment between acquirer and target management teams affects the success of M&As. By tracing managers’ cultural origins based on their family names, we obtain two measures of cultural alignment: cultural distance and origin similarity between the management teams. The regression results show that firms with culturally aligned management teams are more likely to form merger-pairs. Regarding merger-performance, cultural alignment increases acquirer-target-combined announcement returns, acquirers’ post-merger operating and market performance, and the integration of targets’ top executives. Taken together, our results suggest that managers’ cultural alignment is an important determinant of merger success.

我们研究了收购方和目标管理团队之间的文化一致性对并购成功的影响。通过基于姓氏追踪管理者的文化渊源，我们获得了文化一致性的两个衡量标准：管理团队之间的文化距离和渊源相似度。回归结果表明，管理团队文化一致的公司更有可能形成合并对。在并购绩效方面，文化一致性提高了收购方与目标公司合并的公告回报、收购方的并购后运营和市场表现，以及目标公司高管的整合。综上所述，我们的结果表明，管理者的文化一致性是并购成功的重要决定因素。