ually breathtaking rate: this past year saw Disney’s $19 billion acquisition of Capital Cities/ABC, Chemical Banking’s $10 billion merger with Chase Manhattan Corporate, and Hoechst AG’s $7 billion purchase of Marion Merrell Dow. The billion dollar deal in today’s mergers and acquisitions scene is becoming commonplace.
Increasing competition, rising stock prices, dramatic and far-reaching regulatory and marketplace changes are driving the wave of mergers and acquisitions mania. Mergers and acquisitions are one reaction by corporate America to find the ideal strategy that will allow companies to gain market share and control over points of distribution. Before analyzing the impact of the mergers and acquisitions wave in the 1990s, we must define mergers and acquisitions. A merger is basically an acquisition “An acquisition in which all assets and liabilities are absorbed by the buyer; more generally any combination of two companies” (123Jump 1).
Thus, all forms of acquisition equate
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