M&A: A Practical Guide to Doing the Deal, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 23 Final Thoughts on Mergers and Acquisitions

M&A’s guiding principle is one company buying either a competitor or a like business. There is no guarantee of success, yet the acquisition process remains popular with operating firms and financial buyers. Hundreds of thousands of practitioners keep the M&A business vibrant and innovative.

Since the first edition of this book, M&A activity has accelerated at a rapid pace, reaching tens of thousands of deals annually. Large and small companies alike recognize the importance of buying versus building, and the trend has gone global. As operating firms build up their businesses through acquisitions, they now compete with an expanding number of financial buyers. Leveraged buyouts, consolidation transactions, and distressed deals have risen to positions of prominence, and their promoters have access to hundreds of billions of investment dollars. From this environment has evolved an army of M&A participants, all available to service the ever larger transaction volume.

This book has presented a succinct guide to mergers and acquisitions. It has followed the process sequentially and offered a balanced assessment of the risks and rewards. For those who have read this book, I hope it is clear that M&A is not rocket science. An intelligent person can easily discern a deal’s underlying principles, given sufficient time to conduct an analysis.

M&A’s guiding principle is boosting the acquirer’s value through the purchase of a similar ...