Abstract:

Existing literature research has found that financial texts have information. Text message is an expression of management's view of the company's future performance， and it plays a complementary role in the disclosure of corporate financial information. It can alleviate the information asymmetry between the company and investors and improve the company's information disclosure quality. However， M&As announcement report have not received much attention. There are significant differences between M&As announcement reports and regular text information such as annual reports， earnings communication conferences， news media reports and social networks， the disclosure content not only contains the historical information such as the basic situation of the transaction parties and the transaction target. M&As decisions are based more on future development considerations， and the disclosure of such information is highly subjective， the way of expression of text language also has no regulatory constraints， and Managers are free to determine the manner of disclosure. All these factors greatly increase the difference of the text tone of M&As announcement reports. So， does the text tone of M&As announcement reports also have information content？ In the existing literature， there are two viewpoints about the text information effect： information increment view and information manipulation view. The information increment view holds that the disclosure of textual information has incremental value and provides more additional information， which can reduce the information asymmetry between the company and external investors and help investors better evaluate the company's value. According to the information manipulation view， the managers will manipulate text information due to the selfish motives. Then， the text tone of M&As announcement reports is provided to investors with a reliable incremental information or a distorted manipulated information？The natural language text analysis and computer quantitative technology are used to mine the text of M&As announcement report of list companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2008 to 2019. Firstly， whether the text tone of M&As announcement report has information content is studied， and the event study method is used to analyze the relationship between the text tone of M&As announcement report and the short-term cumulative excess return rate. Then the mechanism test is used to investigate the role of investor concern in the transmission of text tone information of M&A announcement report to the short-term cumulative excess return rate. Finally， after examining the information content of the text tone of M&As announcement report， a progressive study is further conducted on the text tone of M&As announcement report， and the reliability of the text tone of information of M&As announcement report is investigated. From the perspective of the impairment of the goodwill of M&As， the relationship between the text tone information of the M&As announcement reports and the impairment of goodwill is analyzed. The empirical results show that：（1）The net positive text tone of the M&As announcement report has a significant positive correlation with the short-term cumulative excess return rate.（2）The mechanism test shows that the net positive text tone of M&As announcement report mainly affected the short-term cumulative excess return rate by attracting the attention of investors. Specifically， the net positive text tone of M&As announcement report will cause the increase of the abnormal search volume of investors， and the lower the text complexity， the more significant the positive relationship between the net positive text tone of M&As announcement report and the market short-term excess cumulative return.（3）Companies with more net positive text tone also have more goodwill impairment， and this relationship is more significant in M&As with performance commitments and share-based payments. This suggests that the positive text tone of M&As announcement reports is not reliable. Management will conduct positive tone management under the “stock price manipulation motive”， and mislead investors， but eventually this distorted information will be “revealed” by goodwill impairment.The findings of this paper broaden the research scope of financial text analysis， deepen the research on the role of textual information disclosure in market investment decisions， and the conclusion of this study is of great practical significance to investors and regulatory authorities.

Key words: M&As announcement reports, text tone, information content, goodwill impairment