Topic > Mergers and Acquisitions: Causes of Failure - 536

Indicated by the exact meaning of the word, the term merger and acquisition (M&A) describes two different circumstances. A merger is the unification of two or more companies into a new one, while an acquisition is the purchase by one company of a majority of the shares of another (Bressmer 1989, Pausenberger 1990, Brauchlin 1990). An M&A is therefore characterized by the fact that after the unification there are fewer companies than before. After an acquisition, however, the target company may remain autonomous or be partially or fully integrated into the new parent company, although the companies remain legally independent entities. The results showed that about half of all mergers or not are successful, but the question of the causes of failure still remains open. The evidence indicates that there does not appear to be a single reason why some mergers fail or why others succeed. One of the reasons for failure could be the communication problem across the company which can create a hostile work environment. When there is a high risk of losing a job, it is difficult to keep people motivated to do their best at work. (Bulent 2005; Buono & Bowditch 2003). Another reason for failure, according to Buono & Bowditch (2003) is that managers should not underestimate the human issues that could arise nor the cultural aspects. As stated in Hayward (2002), acquiring companies may follow the wrong strategy: choosing the wrong target, paying too much for it, and then integrating it poorly (Gilson and Black 1995; Haspeslagh and Jemison 1991). According to Cartwright and Cooper (1993), “financial and strategic considerations dominate the selection of a suitable acquisition target or merger partner. Decisions are driven by questions of availability, price, potential economies of scale and expected earnings ratios. As a result, when the combination fails to achieve financial expectations, post-mortem analysis of merger failure or underperformance tends to focus on re-examining the factors that drove the initial selection decision. Typically, poor selection decisions are attributed to an over-inflated purchase price, managerial incompetence in achieving expected economies of scale, or the organizations not being strategically matched. expectation of both risk and return on the investment. Given a particular level of risk, you should expect the investment to have a particular level of return. For example, investing in a start-up must have the potential for a very high return, given the higher risk of failure, while investing in a large, established business may be paired with a lower expected return, given the lower risk of failure..