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.

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.

The untold history of an American catastrophe The ultrawealthy largely own and guide the newspaper system in the United States. Through entities like hedge funds and private equity firms, this investor class continues to dismantle the one institution meant to give voice to average citizens in a democracy. Margot Susca reveals the little-known history of how private investment took over the newspaper industry. Drawing on a political economy of media, Susca’s analysis uses in-depth interviews and documentary evidence to examine issues surrounding ownership and power. Susca also traces the scorched-earth policies of layoffs, debt, cash-outs, and wholesale newspaper closings left behind by private investors and the effects of the devastation on the future of news and information. Throughout, Susca reveals an industry rocked less by external forces like lost ad revenue and more by ownership and management obsessed with profit and beholden to private fund interests that feel no responsibility toward journalism or the public it is meant to serve.

The secrets of sustained business growth from the experts at A.T. Kearney In Stretch!, experts from consulting firm A.T. Kearney show business leaders how to grow their businesses even in tough times. CEOs worldwide confess that they achieve, on average, just fifty percent of their growth targets. It's not because they can't grow, it's because they've forgotten how. Based on in-depth case studies and analysis of some 25,000 global companies over 14 years, Stretch! combines hard data, fresh ideas, and practical guidance on achieving real growth in any economy. Graeme K. Deans (Toronto, Canada) is a Vice President of A.T. Kearney and leads the company's Global Strategy Practice. Dr. Fritz Kroeger (Berlin, Germany) is a Vice President of A.T. Kearney and a senior strategy consultant for clients worldwide.

This four-volume-set (CCIS 208, 209, 210, 211) constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International Symposium on Applied Economics, Business and Development, ISAEBD 2011, held in Dalian, China, in August 2011. The papers address issues related to Applied Economics, Business and Development and cover various research areas including Economics, Management, Education and its Applications.

Based on a systematic description of possible applications and case studies in the acquisition process, the essential offers a practice-oriented introduction to business wargaming. The high degree of integration of business wargaming with classic strategy instruments from the strategy process is made clear. On this basis, the author describes the development of strategy-compliant acquisition projects that consistently contribute to the achievement of objectives. Readers receive valuable advice for the individual conception of business wargames for strategic, tactical and operational questions from the development of the M&A strategy to post-merger integration