Environmental innovation and takeover performance

Drawing from the resource-based view (RBV), we examine the effect of environmental innovation on mergers and acquisitions (M&As) announcement returns. Using an international sample of M&As for the period of 2003–2021 and an event study methodology, we document that acquirers with higher environmental innovation—innovative acquirers—earn average deal announcement abnormal returns that are 0.10–0.50 percentage points higher than those earned by their non-innovative counterparts. These results are consistent across three important forms of environmental innovation (i.e., product, process, and organizational innovation) and are partly explained by the transfer of environmental innovation from the acquirer to the target. We further find that environmentally innovative acquirers are more likely to engage in majority control and cross-border acquisitions, thus emphasizing the transfer effect. Overall, we contribute to RBV by providing evidence that environmental innovation is a distinctive resource or dynamic capability that is transferable from bidders to targets in the takeover market.