Mergers: Leadership, Performance & Corporate Health

David Fubini, Colin Price and Maurizio Zollo

Palgrave Macmillan and Insead Business Press, 2006
ISBN 0230019722

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The first lines of the first chapter of this book comment that on average mergers and acquisitions deliver at best mediocre results. "A typical merger is, therefore, a bet against the odds." Taking over another company or attempting to merge two businesses is one of the biggest risks to shareholder value, as many of the examples quoted show.

The evidence of experience has not stopped companies launching ever larger take-over bids, and risk professionals in those companies are bound to find themselves caught up somewhere in the difficult process of integrating two businesses. For instance, the authors comment that mergers often have a significant impact on business partners, such as suppliers, distributors and joint venture partners, to which senior managers pay little attention.

The book draws on a systematic analysis of 167 mergers. Although the page layout is over-crowded, the content is readable and contains plenty of direct comments from senior executicves about deals that have gone right and wrong. It could help the risk professional caught up in the integration process put his or her policies within the broader context.

Reviewed by Lee Coppack, Editor of InfoRM