In the process of businesses creating or building shareholder value, they the management are motivated to undertake cross border mergers and acquisitions in other to expand their operations which will then generate greater profits or potential for owners (shareholder) value creation than that of internal growth. Cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&A) internationally have played a key part in this issue of globalisation or global activity of growth and expansion. When firms and companies otherwise known as enterprises continually increase in size, they tend to look for more funding or capital from outside their territory (locality) or country of operation which may not be readily available in their home country of operation to further advance their growth and expansion drive. And this particularly involves transnational firms such as HSBC, British Petroleum (BP), Vodafone and Shell for example taking over companies or businesses in other countries by parting away with huge sums of money. According to Krekel et al.(1969) mergers usually involve businesses or corporations of same or equal size, whilst the acquiring firm in the case of acquisitions tends to be bigger or larger. According to recent trends in cross border mergers and acquisitions (M&A), most of these Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) move to emerging markets in order to take charge or buy controlling interest in those markets. The creation of the European Union (EU) internal market on 31 December 1992 (which seeks to remove trade barriers among member nations) brought about influx of US, Japanese and EU companies holding market positions in EU.

And thus the late nineties witnessed more M&A involving both local and International partners, with mega mergers between multinationals like DaimlerChrysler and Exxon-Mobil, which transformed global market competition. During this period many businesses in emerging markets were privatised thus creating growth opportunities for MNEs to gain access to previously closed markets of enormous potential. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD, 1998) unfold the driving forces behind cross border M&A as per current globalisation. Practitioners of cross border M&A deals encourage deregulation or diversification and liberation of the local and state owned businesses or enterprises, thus affording foreign enterprises or businesses in advanced economies to invest directly, joint venture ship or partnership or even outright take over (UNCTAD, 1999)