Seven key practices that improve the chance for expected integration and synergies

Abstract

A confluence of factors led to acceleration of worldwide merger and acquisition activity beginning around 1994. In the United States, a strong economy producing considerable investment capital, high levels of liquidity, and a variety of strategic imperatives, including heightened international competition, regulatory changes, an explosion of technologies, and a host of perceived synergies, all fueled consolidations. Likewise, contracting markets in the defense industry, falling commodity prices in the oil industry, excess capacity in the automobile industry, unsettling technological changes in the banking and telecommunications industries, and soar-