Do board interlocks affect the frequency and pace of cross-border acquisitions by emerging market firms?

In emerging markets, where strategic information is hard to obtain and often unreliable, how local firms acquire information to execute cross-border acquisitions is unclear. In this paper, we posit that when the market for information is weak, and firms lack experiential knowledge, board interlocks with other cross-border acquirers affect the frequency and pace of cross-border acquisitions. Furthermore, we anticipate board interlock efficacy to decline with the focal firm's firsthand experience (substitution effect) and foreign institutional investors (FIIs) equity holding in the local firm (self-disciplining effect). We find support for our hypotheses in a large sample of Indian firms for the period 2003-2014. Our paper contributes to mergers and acquisitions and emerging markets literature.