Abstract: With the rapid development of China’s economy and the deep participation in the globalization, a large number of Chinese enterprises have crossed the border to carry out cross-border mergers and acquisitions, during this process they must be faced with the financing problems resulted from the large amount of funds involved in cross-border mergers and acquisitions. The endogenous financing is often difficult to meet its large amount fund requirements, while the exogenous financing is faced with a strong preference for equity financing by the domestic listed companies. The related financing theory shows that the debt financing is often more helpful to the appreciation of shareholders’ wealth than the equity financing, in order to realize the optimization of the enterprise value. This paper takes the cases of cross-border mergers and acquisitions carried out by Chinese listed companies in recent years as the research objects to study the impact of the shareholders’ wealth by means of the debt and equity financing through theoretical and empirical analysis. The results are generally in agreement with the relevant theoretical assumptions, that is, compared with equity financing, the way of cross-border M & A debt financing adopted by domestic listed companies can bring more wealth effect to shareholders in a short term.

Key words: cross-border M&A; debt financing; equity financing; way of financing; shareholder’s wealth