Relationship Between Innovations, Capital Expenditures and Post-M&A Performance: Evidence from Vietnam, 2005-2012

The paper attempts to explore the plausibility and validity of theoretical relationship between determination of controlling an acquired firm’s capital, assets and brand values versus its capability of innovation, and ex post performance of Vietnam’s M&A industry amid the resurgence of the Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) wave from 2005 to 2012. The study mainly employs logistic regressions performed on a categorical data sample, consisting of 212 M&A cases. The results reported from this analysis suggest significant and plausible relationship between pre-M&A pursuit of innovation (versus capital/physical assets) of the acquired and post-M&A performance. In addition, pre-M&A expenditures tend to cause poor post-M&A performance. As a plausible reasoning, the paper concludes that creative performance can be a factor to pursue in M&As, which suggests the need to emphasize capable and willing human capital. However, in a wave of M&A where pursuits of capital resources, assets and brand value are overemphasized, the influence of innovation factor to the ex post success becomes negligible.