Faithin Omaha eBook Collection

Download or read book Performance Measurement of Acquisitions and Acquisition Series written by Jens Engelhardt and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The profitability of merger and acquisition (M&A) activity has generated a small mountain of research over the past 20 years" (Bruner, 2002: 48). This 'small mountain' uses a variety of measures to determine acquisition success - with more than ambiguous results. This thesis adds to this discussion from a different perspective: practitioners were asked to illustrate their approach to measuring acquisition performance. Drawing from a survey of 24 very active acquirers, this thesis generates two main findings. First, it reviews the various criteria used to measure acquisition performance and presents manager's assessment of each of them. Findings indicate that accounting-based measures and non-financial criteria are significantly more important than those of a stock market nature. This contradicts most academic approaches that favor stock market-related measurement (in most cases using abnormal returns). In addition, the mutual relatedness of the criteria is discussed. Second, the thesis identifies companies that have pursued or are currently pursuing an acquisition program, defined as the acquisition of several mutually related targets. Five of these companies are introduced in more detail, as are the characteristics of their respective acquisition program. I also elaborate on the performance measurement of these programs. A five-dimensional framework is used to compare the performance measurement of the case study companies. Results show that acquisition programs have existed for quite a while. Only one major difference could be found to the measurement of single acquisitions: due to their larger relative size, acquisition programs have a more significant potential impact on the company's stock price and, as such, are more carefully watched by analysts and shareholders. Hence, stock market-oriented criteria seem to be more meaningful than for single acquisitions.