Mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, spin-offs, equity investments, and alliances are a favorite subject and frequent target of business pundits and academics. Numerous studies have shown that M&Amp;A destroys value for the acquiring company at least half of the time, while spin-offs and alliances have produced similar results. Some observers characterize the motives behind many of these transactions, particularly the largest and most notorious, as mere financial engineering or ego boosting.
Despite odds that favor failure, the most successful companies in the high-technology industry happen to be active deal makers. To explain this apparent anomaly, we assessed the performance of the 485 largest high-tech companies as reckoned by market capitalization. First we broke them into four groups based on market value created and on the growth of market capitalization; then we studied the transaction activity of each group—some 5,000 deals in all. Our analysis established that while the average merger or acquisition destroys value for the acquirer, deals carried out by companies that undertake them strategically and often actually do create value. Our analysis of alliances produced similar results.1
How then do top performers manage their transactions? For a deeper look at this question, we used 30 case studies...