An indispensable guide to strategic best practices for business mergers Thirteen years ago, the experts at A. T. Kearney embarked on a landmark, worldwide study of business mergers. Encompassing 25,000 companies across 24 industries in 53 countries, the study revealed much crucial information that was previously unknown about business consolidation. This book shares those revelations and insights with senior executives, consultants, and industry analysts involved in the merger process. More important, it builds on those findings to present readers with a solid game plan for winning the consolidation game. Readers learn about the consolidation cycles through which industries pass, how to identify where in the cycle their industry currently lies, how to leverage that knowledge in determining which organizational changes they need to make and when they need to make them, and how to develop and deploy the most successful merger strategies.

As industries worldwide move toward consolidation, niche companies need to take advantage of strategies that are forward-thinking and anticipate new trends. Beating the Global Consolidation Endgame identifies nine key strategies that niche companies must master in order to outperform their markets and gain the largest benefits from consolidation. It draws from a landmark study conducted by global management consulting firm A.T. Kearney of more than 600,000 small to mid-sized niche companies over a 15-year period. A.T. Kearney thought leaders Dr. Fritz Kroeger, Dr. Andrej Vizjak, and Michael Moriarty reveal nine successful Endgame niche strategies while explaining how these strategies are most viable at certain points during consolidation. In order to time the strategies accurately, all decision makers must know what stage of industry consolidation they're in, along with the implications of each stage. This ensures a company's survival and success against global consolidators. Taking you through the Merger Endgame Theory lifecycle, the authors show you how to develop stable niche strategies by: Determining your industry's Endgame position and expected evolution of consolidation in coming years Identifying industry sectors with comparable models to illuminate strategic success factors for your sector Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of Endgame consolidation winners and losers Spotting potential market splits and new configurations for the value-creation chain Determining the best niche options and the best sequence for executing them These action steps are supported by case studies of leading companies around the world, including BMW, NetJets, Swatch, Ducati, and KPMG--which show how these niche fighters developed competitive advantage, survived market collapses, and delivered superior customer service while increasing their market share.

This book constructs an innovative theoretical analysis framework for corporate consolidation through M&A under the condition of government competition during the transition period. Under the condition of transitional economy, the government is an important agent in economic development. Government behaviors, especially government competitions, are institutional variables that affect enterprise behaviors and corporate consolidation. Based on the perspective of local government competition, starting from the essential problems of China's enterprise M&A during the transition period, and taking “the existence of M&A waves-the occurrence mechanism of M&A under government competition-the process of corporate consolidation under government competition—the macro and micro effects of M&A” as the main line, this book reveals the mechanism and effects of enterprise M&A on the evolution of industrial economic structure and regional economic structure under the paradigm of government competition. At the same time, taking “the motivations for government competition-conducts of government competition-effects of government competition” as the hidden line, the path of government competition and its impact mechanism are investigated. Relevant analysis of government competition is embodied in the logical framework of M&A and corporate consolidation.

Today's corporate deal makers face a conundrum: Though 70% of major acquisitions fail, it's nearly impossible to build a world-class company without doing deals. In Mastering the Merger, David Harding and Sam Rovit argue that a laserlike focus on just four key imperatives--before executives finalize the deal--can dramatically improve the odds of M&A success. Based on more than 30 years of in-the-trenches work on thousands of deals across a range of industries--and supplemented by extensive Bain & Co. research--Harding and Rovit reveal that the best M&A performers channel their efforts into (1) targeting deals that advance the core business; (2) determining which deals to close and when to walk away; (3) identifying where to integrate--and where not to; and (4) developing contingency plans for when deals inevitably stray. Top deal makers also favor a succession of smaller deals over complex "megamergers"--and essentially institutionalize a success formula over time. Helping executives zero in on what matters most in the complex world of M&A, Mastering the Merger offers a blueprint for the decisions and strategies that will beat the odds.