Capitalize on Merger Chaos: Six Ways to Profit from Your Competitors' Consolidation and Your Own

Although short on ""how-to,"" and even shorter on firsthand accounts of success, this book describes six ways a company can benefit from consolidation within an industry. Consultant Grubb and New York University business school professor Lamb correctly point out that most mergers fail to generate a positive return to the shareholders of the merging companies. Thus, they argue, mergers present wonderful opportunities for competing firms to steal employees from the combined enterprise, to attack the marketplace while their competitors are focusing on joining forces, to jump-start internal change , to form joint ventures or strategic alliances with companies unaffected by the merger, to plan their own merger correctly and to rethink an entire business strategy in light of the competition. However, this slight book effectively raises more questions than it answers. For example, while good people are likely to quit or be downsized when companies join forces, how exactly does one attract them? Interviews with CEOs or senior executives who have followed the authors' strategies would have helped enormously. Instead, the authors rely heavily on secondhand sources, such as newspaper and magazine pieces, resulting in a book that serves as a useful checklist but offers little help beyond that. (July)