THEORETICAL AND APPLICATIVE APPROACHES TO BUSINESS COMBINATIONS: A CASE STUDY FROM THE REPUBLIC OF MOLDOVA

The emerging economy of the Republic of Moldova constitutes a favorable environment for mergers and acquisitions (M&A), governed by specific regional factors, local economic opportunities, and the population's aspirations toward European integration, as well as recent global disruptions (including the pandemic crisis, regional instability, and the armed conflict in the neighboring country). Motivated by the international research in this field, we aimed to conduct an exhaustive empirical study on the financial performance of M&A transactions for a sample of 375 enterprises from the Republic of Moldova, specifically during the period from 2019 to 2024, a time interval marked by economic volatility and strategic significance.
The research objective is to establish and conditionally validate the variation in return on assets and capital indicators in Moldovan mergers, as well as to investigate how capital structure and the size of the acquirers and acquirees influence the performance of these transactions.
Research methodology: The quantitative research includes systematization and grouping of data from financial statements provided by the National Bureau of Statistics for entities participating in M&A, as well as multiple linear regression analysis to assess the dependence of return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE) as a result of changes in independent variables. Additionally, R Studio, JASP, and Excel applications were used as statistical data processing tools, while the Bibliometrix tool and Web of Science database were applied for bibliometric analysis.
The research results support the purpose and hypotheses of the paper through three multiple linear regression models, which established the significant dependence of ROA and ROE, determined by gross commercial margin, asset size, and debt ratio.