At the new stage of information technology era, the transmission of information between listed companies and investors may not be dominated by traditional media, but the widely used social media which can provide additional information to listed companies. We utilize the volume of Weibo posts by individuals to generate a direct attention proxy for the effect of social media in China. By applying the latent instrument variables (LIV) approach to control for endogeneity problem, we find that investor attention brought by social media after violations announcements positively affects corporate violations, as reflected in a higher probability and more timely action to redress violations. The positive Weibo-based attention effects are stronger when executives are more concerned about their reputations and companies have better reputations in the capital markets. This paper shows that building an effective and efficient social media platform can better inspire investors to actively pay their attention to certain information of listed companies. Such investors' active attention may form a monitoring role in listed companies and thereby substitute for some external mechanisms to protect their own rights.

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While cross‐border acquisitions (CBAs) by emerging market firms (EMFs) have grown rapidly in recent years, many have failed to bring the acquisitions to completion. Compared with acquisitions initiated by acquirers from developed economies, little is known about the possible determinants of completion or abandonment of CBAs conducted by EMFs. This paper investigates what contributes to the successful completion of CBAs by EMFs. Based on data of 637 announced CBAs by Chinese firms during 2000–17, we find that investing firms’ self‐learning experience from previous acquisitions can significantly increase the completion rate of subsequent related CBAs, while their industrial spillover experience helps raise the completion rate of unrelated CBAs. Our findings also show that the value of acquisition experience is significant only when the target firm is domiciled in countries with comparable level of institutional quality. Our results provide new insights into the complexity of the global M&A market and lessons for EMFs intending to conduct CBAs in the future.