Edinburgh Napier University

  The impact of corporate board characteristics on firm performance continues to be an issue that has given risen to a set of polarizing corporate governance doctrines. In this paper, we identify the impact of corporate board characteristics on Chinese firms’ cross-border Mergers and Acquisition(M&A) performance. We unveil that female board proportion and board memberage diversity exhibit positive and significant effect on cross-border M&A performance, while board member education level difference plays a negative role on cross-border M&A performance. We further introduce an optimization model called Particle Swarm Optimization(PSO) to addressthe optimal board structure. We demonstrate that a better organized board structure, such as increasing female board presentation and board memberage diversity, could be in favor of cross-border M&A performance for Chinese firms.