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Mergers and Acquisitions Basics :All You Need To Know

Introduction to Mergers and Acquisitions

The first decade of the new millennium heralded an era of global mega-mergers. Like the mergers and acquisitions (M&As) frenzy of the 1980s and 1990s, several factors fueled activity through mid-2007: readily available credit, historically low interest rates, rising equity markets, technological change, global competition, and industry consolidation. In terms of dollar volume, M&A transactions reached a record level worldwide in 2007. But extended turbulence in the global credit markets soon followed.

The speculative housing bubble in the United States and elsewhere, largely financed by debt, burst during the second half of the year. Banks, concerned about the value of many of their own assets, became exceedingly selective and largely withdrew from financing the highly leveraged transactions that had become commonplace the previous year. The quality of assets held by banks through out Europe and Asia also became suspect, reflecting the global nature of the credit markets. As credit dried up, a malaise spread worldwide in the market for highly leveraged M&A transactions.

By 2008, a combination of record high oil prices and a reduced availability of credit sent mo st of the world’s economies into recession, reducing global M&A activity by more than one-third from its previous high. This global recession deepened during the first half of 2009—despite a dramatic drop in energy prices and highly stimulative monetary and fiscal policies—extending the slump in M&A activity.

In recent years, governments worldwide have intervened aggressively in global credit markets (as well as in manufacturing and other sectors of the economy) in an effort to restore business and consumer confidence, restore credit market functioning, and offset

deflationary pressures. What impact have such actions had on mergers and acquisitions? It is too early to tell, but the implications may be significant.

M&As are an important means of transferring resources to where they are most needed and of removing underperforming managers. Government decisions to save some firms while allowing others to fail are likely to disrupt this process. Such decisions are often based on the notion that some firms are simply too big to fail because of their potential impact on the economy—consider AIG in the United States. Others are clearly motivated by politics. Such actions disrupt the smooth functioning of markets, which rewards good decisions and penalizes poor ones. Allowing a business to believe that it can achieve a size “too big t o fail” may create perverse incentives. Plus, there is very little historical evidence that governments are better than markets at deciding who should fail and who should survive.

In this chapter, you will gain an understanding of the underlying dynamics of M&As in the context of an increasingly interconnected world. The chapter begins with a discussion of M&As as change agents in the context of corporate restructuring. The focus is on M&As and why they happen, with brief consideration given to alternative ways of increasing shareholder value. You will also be introduced to a variety of legal structures and strategies that are employed to restructure corporations.

Throughout this book, a firm that attempts to acquire or merge with another company is called an acquiring company, acquirer, or bidder. The target company or target is the firm being solicited by the acquiring company. Takeovers or buyouts are generic terms for a change in the controlling ownership interest of a corporation.

Words in bold italics are the ones most important for you to understand fully;they are all included in a glossary at the end of the book. Mergers and Acquisitions as Change Agents