In order to adapt to the new situation of economic globalization and market opening after China's entry into WTO, China must be integrated into the world economic system on a larger scale and at a higher level, and must speed up the implementation of the "going out" strategy. This is the need to meet the challenges of globalization and technological progress, share the global market opening and knowledge accumulation, and solve the contradiction between economic development and resource shortage. At this stage, China enterprises should make new achievements in "going global", especially in the transnational development and utilization of scarce domestic resources and international cooperation in high-tech industries.
Keywords: cross-border M&A resource shortage, core competitiveness
Cross-border M&A is an important form of enterprise expansion and one of the most important forms of international direct investment in recent years. The transnational M&A of China enterprises began in the mid-1980s, and now it has become an important way of foreign direct investment in China. The Ministry of Commerce recently revealed that there are currently more than 30,000 "going global" China enterprises in 149 countries and regions, and their investment focus has gradually shifted from Hong Kong, Macao and North America to developing countries such as Asia-Pacific, Africa and Latin America. Some advantageous enterprises are developing into large-scale multinational enterprises integrating R&D, production, sales and service at home and abroad, and a number of overseas R&D centers and industrial clusters are gradually established; According to the latest rankings of Forbes and Fortune, in 2005, there were 15 China enterprises in the world's top 500.
These overseas investment projects have not only brought new development space for China enterprises, but also achieved positive results in utilizing foreign resources, capital technology, information and management experience. First of all, economic development and resource shortage are the grim situations that China has faced since 1990s. Sharing foreign resources to ensure the stable development of domestic economy has become an inevitable choice of China's global resource strategy. Second, there is a big gap between China enterprises and multinational companies in developed countries in terms of technology level, and most enterprises fail to master the core technology of their own industries. Most entrepreneurs and scholars believe that the reason why our transnational operations were in the downstream of the global industrial chain in the past stemmed from the lack of independent research and development capabilities. In fact, it also belongs to the category of independent innovation to acquire key technologies through technology introduction and mergers and acquisitions and quickly improve technological and commercial competitiveness. In the past, China imported mature or even outdated technology or equipment from abroad, which effectively helped us to form a certain manufacturing capacity and technical level, but rarely brought sustainable competitive advantages to China enterprises, so that we kept catching up with others. Through enterprise merger and acquisition, we can obtain the core technology of strategic competitive position for enterprises in a short time and realize a qualitative leap.
1, analysis of cross-border M&A to enhance the international competitiveness of China enterprises.
The core elements of M&A are market dominance and monopoly. For the growth of enterprises, it is very slow to rely solely on their own accumulation, and it is necessary to resort to mergers and acquisitions as an exogenous expansion form. Since modern times, there have been five waves of corporate mergers and acquisitions around the world, and each wave of mergers and acquisitions has produced a number of giant companies. It is necessary and entirely possible for China enterprises to rapidly improve their scale and efficiency through mergers and acquisitions.
1. 1 Obtaining strategic resources is the main motivation for transnational mergers and acquisitions of large state-owned energy development enterprises in China. Several large-scale transnational mergers and acquisitions between CNOOC and PetroChina have attracted considerable attention. The former has acquired tens of millions of tons of crude oil geological reserves by acquiring part of the shares of Spanish Ripso company in five major oil fields in Indonesia and natural gas projects on the northwest continental shelf of Australia. The latter expanded its overseas oil and gas exploration and production assets by transnational acquisition of Indonesian oil and gas assets of Dai Wen Energy Group. Of course, the resources we emphasize here are not limited to natural resources such as energy and minerals, but also include various strategic resources such as capital, technology, talents and knowledge. The free flow of these resources around the world means that enterprises can find business opportunities in a wider field. Chinese enterprises should adjust their development ideas according to the changes of the times.
1.2 market expansion and integration enterprises can quickly gain new market opportunities through mergers and acquisitions, and reach a critical scale without loading the industrial production capacity, which is the main way to enhance the international competitiveness of China enterprises and obtain more profits. In addition, the pursuit of market power and market dominance in oligopoly market is also the driving force of mergers and acquisitions. Multinational companies can increase their market share through horizontal mergers and acquisitions, and increase their control over the international market by virtue of the reduction of competitors; The vertical M&A of multinational corporations can effectively control the activities of competitors by controlling a large number of key raw materials and sales channels, and improve the entry barriers of enterprises in their fields with the help of their brands, so as to quickly enter the host country market and expand the total market share of the original enterprises. The acquisition of German Schneider Company by TCL Group enabled it to obtain sales of 200 million euros and market share of more than 465,438+00,000 color TV sets in the European market, exceeding the total quota of 400,000 sets granted by the European Union to seven enterprises in China.
The R&D technology obtained by 1.3 has strong effectiveness and low uncertainty. There are more than 30,000 enterprises in China engaged in transnational operations, of which 1800 are mainly engaged in foreign contracted projects, and more than 600 are engaged in foreign labor cooperation, mainly due to labor advantages. A considerable number of enterprises are engaged in import and export, export-oriented production and processing, agriculture, tourism, catering and other businesses, which are basically at the downstream or end of the global industrial chain, and most of them are doing low value-added work. In this case, everyone agrees that "independent knowledge innovation" is the only way for countries and enterprises to achieve sustainable growth in the future. At present, there is a common misunderstanding that independent technology is limited to independent research and development. Independent research and development has great uncertainty and long cycle, which may make enterprises lose some strategic time "windows" and thus miss the best market opportunity. In fact, in addition, technology introduction, mergers and acquisitions of other companies to obtain key technologies, and rapid improvement of technology and commercial competitiveness also belong to the category of independent innovation. However, experts in technical management know that only some general technologies or second-and third-rate processes or equipment can be obtained by introducing foreign technologies, and those core technical capabilities that can achieve strategic competitive position for enterprises can basically not be obtained in this way.
China Shanda Online Game Company was founded as a game agent without any R&D business. It immediately acquired the ability to develop game products by acquiring the controlling stake of ACTOZ, a Korean online game developer. In addition, through the acquisition of ZONA, the world's leading online game engine technology development enterprise, it has achieved a leading technical position in the industry in just two years, which cannot be achieved by other means.
At the end of 2005, Lenovo announced the acquisition of IBM's PC business for $65.438+0.75 billion, which not only acquired IBM's PC business and market, but also obtained the world's best notebook R&D capability, R&D technology, brand and more than 4,000 patents registered globally, which rapidly improved its technical strength and independent innovation capability. If Lenovo relies entirely on closed-door research and development, it may take many years to reach such a technical level. Compared with self-development to build the core competitiveness of enterprises, transnational M&A has strong timeliness and low cost, especially when some knowledge and resources belong to another enterprise, M&A becomes the only way to gain this advantage.
1.4 Cross-border M&A bypasses trade barriers, avoids foreign intellectual property protection barriers, and quickly enters strategic industries. In recent years, the European Union has set up many barriers to China's manufacturing industry, especially the textile industry. With the export blocked, merging local enterprises has become one of the important ways for China enterprises to enter Europe. Hunan Zhonglian Company has achieved 20 years of technological upgrading through the acquisition of British Lubaojie Company, and has jumped from a little-known enterprise to a world-famous enterprise that produces new products such as HDTV and plasma color TV in industries with underdeveloped technology.
Because of the monopoly position of large international companies in some industries, their private agreements often become the de facto industry standard, which is extremely unfavorable to the latecomers, especially those in China. DVD companies in China are often sued by foreign companies for infringing intellectual property rights when they enter overseas markets. BOE, a China enterprise, has acquired the ownership of core technologies through the acquisition of overseas enterprises and evaded the barriers of intellectual property protection. BOE acquired the TFT-LCD business of Hyundai Electronics in Korea for $380 million, from which it obtained relevant patented technology and talents, and successfully entered the TFT-LCD field monopolized by Korean, Taiwan Province and Japanese companies. The core technology acquired through transnational acquisition has formed a strong technical strength and independent innovation ability in a short time, which has made China take a big step forward in the field of optoelectronics and microelectronics.
2, the implementation of cross-border mergers and acquisitions need to pay attention to the problem.
According to the survey of Bi Bo Management Consulting Company, half of the M&A activities of more than 500 multinational companies failed to achieve the predetermined M&A goals, and the productivity declined in different degrees in the first few months. 6 1% of enterprises failed to achieve their financial goals. It is not an easy task to acquire core technical capabilities through enterprise mergers and acquisitions. In addition to the difficulties and problems usually encountered in M&A operation and integration, it also involves a series of problems related to technical management. Generally speaking, China enterprises still have the following main problems in the process of transnational operation:
2. 1 Systematic technical information collection and analysis ability Accurate information is the premise of successful technical decision-making, so international advanced companies usually have full-time departments and personnel responsible for systematic and forward-looking collection, analysis and prediction of relevant technical information, and can timely warn the development trend of technology in combination with their own business needs and technical development strategies. The information management departments of domestic companies usually only provide services such as document collection, and few full-time departments are responsible for technical information to truly understand the company's technology and business. Its related staff do not have comprehensive technical expertise and vision. When an enterprise has a strong technical intelligence capability, it can not only discover potential opportunities for technology acquisition in time, but also help to make more scientific and wise technology acquisition decisions.
2.2 Conduct detailed due diligence on the target technology to be acquired to avoid technical or commercial hidden dangers after acquisition. In 200 1 year, Zhejiang Huali acquired almost all the intellectual property rights, R&D equipment and personnel of Philips' CDMA wireless communication department, as well as the exclusive authorization of its semiconductor to develop CDMA protocol software, and owned 600 CDMA core technology patents, which entered the core field of this business. However, four years after the merger, Huali CDMA was silent. One of the problems lies in Huali's due diligence on this technical information-Philips and Qualcomm have a series of cross agreements and authorization agreements on CDMA chips, and both parties promise not to disclose them to third parties. Therefore, Huali's merger and acquisition could not indirectly obtain the patented CDMA technology in Qualcomm owned by Philips, which caused heavy losses. Therefore, the due diligence on the core technology of the acquired enterprise must be cautious, and the relevant research and evaluation work should be detailed to prevent huge sums of money from buying short technology.
2.3 Cultivate and establish enterprise science and technology management departments with operational capabilities. The responsibility and authority of science and technology management departments of most domestic enterprises are limited to internal technology research and development and cooperation, and technology acquisition strategies are rarely considered from the business level. Foreign companies often cooperate with science and technology management departments to gain or cultivate technological competitive advantages. Therefore, it is suggested that the strategic planning department and the business M&A department of China enterprises should strengthen close cooperation with the technical department, and take enterprise M&A as an effective way to enhance the core competitiveness of enterprises.
2.4 Timely and effective technology integration and retention of key talents Multinational companies are rich in human resources, and the greater the investment in human resources development, the higher the technical level. The key to truly transform the merged technology and patents into the technological capability and competitive advantage of the enterprise itself lies in activating the years' experience, working methods and cooperation ability of those R&D and production personnel, and constantly maintaining a strong competitive advantage. Therefore, enterprises in China should learn from the mature experience of foreign countries and pay more attention to the development and training of human resources, so as to meet the needs of transnational operation and maintain the innovation and competitive advantage of enterprises.
3. Conclusion
The trend of "going out" is a positive phenomenon, which shows that China is integrating into the world economic system on a larger scale and at a higher level. Strengthen the implementation of the "going out" strategy, explore the international market, effectively improve the supply of resources by means of capital operation and asset merger and acquisition, eliminate regional barriers, establish overseas R&D centers, and quickly acquire key technologies to become a multinational company with strong international competitiveness. In the long run, the main motivation for China enterprises to go global will be to make better use of strategic opportunities in foreign markets.
refer to
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