Abstract: Based on the events of material asset restructuring typical of acquirers listed in China stock market from 2008 to 2011, this paper investigates shareholder wealth effect, corporate governance and market liberalization on the acquisition performance over the four-year post-acquisition period. The findings are as follows. Firstly, corporate governance enhances acquisition market-based performance and accounting-based performance together, and the impact on accounting-based performance is characterized by the sequence of the weak first and strong later. Secondly, shareholder wealth effect and market liberalization improve acquisition market-based performance, and the impact from shareholder wealth effect is strong first and then weak. Further analysis reaches more conclusions. Firstly, corporate governance of shareholders' annual general meeting and separating the chairman and CEO roles increase acquisition market-based performance and accounting-based performance together. Secondly, increasing the number of directors and percentage of independent directors and female managers in a board of appropriate size has a positive influence on acquisition accounting-based performance. Thirdly, in the process of marketization, marketing intermediary and legal system are positively related with acquisition market-based performance. In this paper, we reveal that under the background of material asset reorganization, the formal system of corporate governance and the system environment of market liberalization are helpful for acquirers to improve their acquisition performance.

Key words: acquisition performance, shareholder wealth effect, corporate governance, market liberalization