Mergers and acquisitions

The key is knowing what your top price is—and having the discipline to stick to it.

Executing a new strategy nearly always requires new resources and capabilities-and most firms seek them out the wrong way. In a 10-year study of 162 telecom...

During the past 25 years an increasing proportion of U.S. companies have seen wisdom in pursuing a strategy of diversification. Between 1950 and 1970, for example, single-business companies comprising the Fortune “500” declined from 30% to 8% of the total. Acquisition has become a standard approach to diversification. In recent years the productivity of capital […]

In the wake of a series of gross corporate abuses around the turn of the century, Congress passed Sarbanes-Oxley, which was intended to make corporate...

Now that providing services is more lucrative than making products, the old foundations for success in manufacturing are crumbling. Smart manufacturers are creating new business models to capture profits at the customer’s end of the value chain.

Companies are increasingly paying for acquisitions with stock rather than cash. But both they and the companies they acquire need to understand just how big a difference that decision can make to the value shareholders will get from a deal.

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Mergers and acquisitions, the stuff of newspaper headlines, quite often fail. Around 50% of mergers don’t achieve their business objectives, and takeovers cause the shareholders of most acquirers to lose money, according to several studies conducted over the past four decades. Yet, in an ironic twist, companies from developing countries such as China, India, Malaysia, […]

Leveraged buyouts have become a prominent and perhaps permanent part of the corporate landscape on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1988, the combined value of LBOs in the United States exceeded $77 billion, more than four times the value of all LBOs completed in 1983. LBOs are a more recent phenomenon in Europe, but […]

Research on cross-border acquisitions shows that, contrary to conventional wisdom, they don't hamper domestic operations--they add to their efficiency...

AT&T’s recently announced acquisition of T-Mobile will invite hellfire from telecom regulators who fantasize over a different market structure, in which 17 mom-and-pop carriers serve the masses with tender love and care. As an economist, and as a customer of AT&T (with my mom, wife, and oldest daughter on my account), I am not so […]

A merger that immediately boosts your earnings per share is better than one that dilutes it, right? Wrong.

On November 1, 1994, P. Roy Vagelos retired after nearly 20 years at Merck. As head of the research labs from 1975 to 1985 and then as CEO, Vagelos turned...

Few deal makers have been at it as long, and at such a high level, as Lazard’s CEO. Here’s how he unlocks value in people, companies, and industries.

A global hotel company that has just completed a large merger is debating whether to retain all the brands that came with the acquisition. The company...

In valuing any investment project or corporate acquisition, executives must decide what discount rate to use in their estimates of future cash flows....

How will businesses respond to the power of technology and the threat of climate change?

Growth-in revenues and profits-is the yardstick by which the competitive fitness and health of organizations is measured. Consistent profitable growth...

Why Jeff Immelt shed his most profitable business unit.

An analysis of 2,500 mergers.