Читать книгу Applied Mergers and Acquisitions - Robert F. Bruner - Страница 115

This chapter has argued that the M&A practitioner should widen his or her frame of reference to embrace the global market. The volume of cross-border M&A is large, and, if present trends of market integration continue, will get larger. Research suggests that foreign buyers pay more, creating a natural incentive for target shareholders to entertain offers from across borders. Certainly, the drivers of M&A outlined in this chapter echo the drivers of domestic M&A: Chapter 4 portrayed market turbulence as the primary driver. If anything, the cross-border arena displays more turbulence.

Cross-border M&A activity and its drivers pose some important implications for the practitioner.

 Get a view about countries and regions. In the turbulent world arena, perhaps the worst stance is to be myopic, naive, and uninformed. This chapter gave a rough sketch of four perspectives that can aggregate to a view: macroeconomic, microeconomic, institutional, and cultural. These perspectives are not easily given to a checklist of data to acquire or analysis to do. Country analysis is a process of diagnosis (like medicine) rather than design (like engineering). Skills of investigation and reflection are important foundations for cross-border M&A.EXHIBIT 5.12 Country Analysis Based on Four Perspectives

  Consider local and global turbulence and how it changes competition across borders. Attend to the sources of turbulence and its impacts—insights about these will spring from analysis of countries and regions. But one can also look to the well-known sources (technological innovation, deregulation, trade liberalization, demographic change, and market integration) and study their impacts on countries. Of special interest are “inflection points” or changes in economic or competitive conditions that may generate special investment opportunities. Also consider that turbulence usually has an asymmetric impact across countries—M&A can afford one form of arbitrage across these asymmetries.

 Anticipate the reaction of competitors. Global market integration will admit new competitors to country arenas. But to the extent that trade blocs may restrict the entry of outsiders into your market, it becomes extremely important to anticipate the competitive actions and reactions of competitors. It is reasonable to assume that competitors within, and outside of, the bloc recognize both the effects of turbulence and the associated asymmetries.

 Anticipate the reaction of investors. A mental trap of cross-border M&A is business imperialism, the view that your firm must “own” a place in a foreign market simply for its own sake. Under this view, the decision maker is distracted from a fundamental aim of capitalist enterprise, to create value for investors. The rise of sophisticated global financial intermediaries such as banks, mutual funds, and pension funds creates vocal investors who focus on value creation. The implication is that the logic of value creation will assume greater, not less, importance in accessing capital with which to finance M&A activities.