“…In Europe, in the early 1990s, multinational firms from developed economies launched numerous acquisitions in connection with massive privatizations of state-owned companies during the economic transformation of Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries (Estrin et al, 2009;Meyer et al, 2009;Iwasaki and Mizobata, 2018). Recently, the global financial crisis (GFC) has hit hard CEE companies (Hanousek et al, 2015), leading many of them into financial distress and forcing some to exit the market (Baumöhl et al, 2019;Iwasaki and Kim, 2020;Iwasaki et al, 2021). Under these circumstances, takeovers by stronger counterparts represent a viable solution for restructuring the assets of distressed firms, as a takeover may serve as an emergency-resolution mechanism instead of bankruptcy (Stiglitz, 1972).…”