This paper studies the spillover effect of star funds in the Chinese mutual fund market. I show that star funds can attract more capital inflows to their sibling funds (managed by same fund manager) and family funds (managed by same fund company). The spillover effect is stronger for sibling funds.Further, I propose two mechanisms of spillover effect of star funds. The first mechanism is related to investors’ limited attention and ability. Star funds can easily attract investors’ attention among numerous fund products. The high degree of attention of star funds makes their related funds (e.g., family funds and sibling funds) get more attention, thus attracting more capital flows. I show that the spillover effect of star funds to their sibling funds is stronger among funds with a higher proportion of individual investors. Due that individual investors are more limited in attention and more easily pay attention to sibling funds, the result thus verifies the mechanism to a certain extent. The second mechanism is about performance correlation. Investors choose sibling or family funds of star funds because they expect their future performance to be as excellent as that of star funds. I find that the performance correlation between sibling funds and star funds is stronger than that between family funds and star funds. Combined with the result that the spillover effect of star funds on sibling funds is stronger than that on family funds, it verifies the mechanism to some extent. This paper is of great significance for understanding the spillover effect of star funds.

Valuation adjustment mechanism has been widely applied in acquisitions of listed companies in China today, and is usually agreed upon future financial performance indicators of acquired companies (mostly net income). This paper examines how changes of key contents of VAM agreement affect firms’ ability to meet performance commitments from the perspective of incentive effects. Empirical results show that as the performance goals set in VAM agreement becomes higher, the incentive for management to meet performance commitments will initially increase and then decrease, so that the ratio of actual profits to promised profits for target firms will reach peak at some reasonable performance goal and then decrease. Second, as the level of the information asymmetry between buyer and seller turns higher, the incentive effect of performance goals becomes lower. Third, compared with cash-based compensation, stock-based compensation shows significantly higher incentive effects on promisors thus increasing the ability for target firms to achieve performance commitments.

This study investigates the performance effects of cross-industry mergers and acquisitions (M&A) using a sample of firms listed in China’s Growth Entrepreses Market (GEM). Compared to firms listed in the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges, firms listed in the GEM are much smaller and tend to derive the majority of their revenues from a single industry. I first analyze the motives for firms listed in the GEM to engage in M&As and propose a set of factors that may influence their likelihood of M&A activities. Using data on 55 cross-industry M&As between January 1, 2012 and December 31, 2016, I find that investor generally responded positively in short-term, as indicated by the positive accumulated abonormal returns over the first five trading days following the announcements. Meanwhile, I found no evidence that investors benefited from cross-industry M&As in long-term over three years after the event. Further analysis suggests that the short-term effects of cross-industry M&As by GEM listed firms were influenced by the target firm’s market valuation, whether the M&A was paid by cash, the amount of the payment, and the degree of difference between the acquiring firm’s and the target firm’s industries. These findings have important implications for the investors and senior executives of firms listed in the GEM.