Financial Times Handbook of Corporate Finance, 2nd Edition

11

MERGERS: IMPULSE, REGRET AND SUCCESS

IntroductionThe merger decisionYou say acquisition, I say mergerMerger statisticsWhat drives firms to merge?Do the shareholders of acquiring firms gain from mergers?Managing mergersConclusionWebsitesNotes

Introduction

The topic of mergers is one of those areas of finance that attracts interest from the general public as well as finance specialists and managers. There is nothing like an acrimonious bid battle to excite the press, where one side is portrayed as ‘David’ fighting the bullying ‘Goliath’, or where one national champion threatens the pride of another country by taking over a key industry. Each twist and turn of the campaign is reported on radio and television news broadcasts, and, finally, ...