Research on Risk Management of Cross-Border M&A in China Petroleum Corporations

China petroleum corporations have achieved great success in cross-M&A activities, including scale, power and pace, such as the acquisition of PetroKazakhstan by China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) in 2005. However, they have also suffered setbacks and difficulties, and failed in the end, especially China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) had to retreat from bidding for Unocal (the ninth big American petroleum company) by USD 1,400,000,000 more than the competitor due to political risk. Thus, a conclusion can be drawn through empirical study of these failure cases, that is, the main risks in cross-M&A events for China oil companies are political risk, economic risk and petroleum geological risk. Then, in order to assess and warn the risks in advance, a complete risk indicator system has been set up around the three risk factors separately. The political risk indicators consist of international relation, internal political situation and policies of the host countries; the economic risk indicators comprise price, exchange rate, financing and tax; while the geological risk indicators involve source condition, reservoir condition and others. At last, according to the concrete risks, a lot of countermeasure, aiming at risk scatter, risk transfer and risk reduction, are put forward. Risk scatter measures are 2 approaches; one is diversification investment in different oil resource region in the world. Another is diversification structure by integrating upstream and downstream including exploration, development, storage, transportation, oil refining and marketing. Some methods may transfer risk, for example, seeking for enterprises from host country and various countries as investment partner; investing foreign Private Offered Fund; arranging insurance, registering a new company abroad, and peeling sensitive asset off the merged target and so on. To reduce risk, there are also some suggestions: bank lender from more than one country and organization including host bank, win-win treaty between host country and China, employment localization, etc, which should be taken into account in cross-border M&A.