Studies on Mergers and Acquisitions: A Review

Abstract

Merger and acquisition (M&A) activities are an integral part of industrial sector worldwide. M&A transactions being a very popular corporate strategy, attract widespread attention of industrialists, managers, shareholders, academicians, governments, policymakers, and many other stakeholders related directly or indirectly to the business sector. With large number of changes occurring in the global corporate scene and increasing number of M&A transactions involving huge financial deals, M&A have been an important field of interest. M&A activities being as old as the industrial organizations, many research studies have been undertaken to analyze the motives behind these activities involving trusts, combinations, amalgamations, consolidations, conglomerates, and  merger, acquisition and takeover deals etc. The present study attempts to review various research works conducted to analyze variety of reasons for M&A activities in last two decades.