Global Versus Domestic only Mergers and Acquisitions Essay

Global Versus Domestic only Mergers and Acquisitions - Essay Example The strategy of Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) plays an important role to both sides of the growth path by enabling strong companies to assume faster growth than their competition thereby rewarding entrepreneurs for their efforts and ensuring the weaker companies get swallowed faster and even made redundant through share erosion and exclusion. M&A, therefore, is a crucial fraction of any healthy economy by basically ensuring that shareholders are able to gain rewards from their businesses (Thomson & Martin, 2005). This fact, coalesced with the potential for large returns makes M&A a highly attractive method for entrepreneurs and business owners to capitalize on their company values. It is, therefore, no wonder that the unique business trend of M&A has, in the recent times, become a common occurrence in the business world between firms seeking to achieve strategic value for themselves. M&A deals always make media headlines probably due to the huge amounts of cash that some of them entail, sometimes involving billions of US dollars which may exceed the GDP of some small countries. The main reason for their occurrence is to boost the shareholder value of both firms and this is also used as a performance measure to gauge the success of M&A (Galpin & Herndon, 2007). M&A is used as a survival tactic during tough economic times and in most cases involves strong companies buying out smaller ones to create more cost-efficient, competitive companies. M&A can either take place between firms operating within a country’s borders (domestic M&A) or beyond a particular country’s boundaries (global M&A). This article will provide a general overview of merger and acquisitions and then compare and contrast the domestic and global M&A using a few case studies (Aoki, Jackson & Miyajima, 2007).