Share pledging by controlling shareholders is accompanied with a risk of control transfer when stock price decline triggers a margin call. This situation motivates controlling shareholders and firms to initiate value-enhancing activities to manage the pledging quagmire. Using a sample of Chinese listed firms, we find that firms with pledging controlling shareholders are more likely to implement mergers and acquisitions (M&As) than other firms. Their M&As also perform better, regardless of whether using short- or long-term stock returns or operating income as the performance measure. Furthermore, the positive effect of share pledging on M&As is more pronounced in non-state-owned enterprises, firms with individual controlling shareholders (especially families), firms with better governance, and firms with higher financial capabilities. Additional analyses on deal types also show that firms with pledging controlling shareholders are more likely to engage in diversified, non-affiliated, and cash-financed acquisitions. These results consistently suggest that M&As may effectively eliminate firms' pledging risks and that share pledging mitigates shareholders' conflict of interest regarding M&A decisions.

Family involvement as chair of the board combines the reputation of the controlling family and the firm. Thus, the family's incentive to prevent reputation loss acts as a corporate governance mechanism in mitigating self-serving and bad news hoarding behavior of family firms. We find a lower future stock price crash risk in family firms with family related chairman, compared with family firms with non-family related chairman. The impact of family related chairman is more pronounced in firms with weaker external monitoring and more severe financial distress, and when families have greater reputation concern. Additionally, we find family-chair firms conduct more bad news forecasting, less tunneling behavior, higher earnings quality, as well as have lower costs of equity and overall better performance in the future. The family CEO has little impact on future stock price crash risk.