the.com/merger
Two companies marry, the spreadsheets vow forever, and someone always loses their job by spring.
means A merger is the combining of two companies into a single entity, pooling their assets, operations, and ownership.
from From the verb 'merge,' which traces to the Latin 'mergere,' meaning 'to dip, plunge, or immerse' — the same root that surfaces in 'submerge' and 'emerge.' Originally a legal term: when one thing was 'merged' into another, the smaller was absorbed and ceased to exist on its own. The corporate sense, with its '-er' suffix turning the action into a thing, grew up in the language of law and finance, where one entity quietly drowns inside another.
- Failure rate
- Roughly 70-90% destroy shareholder value
- Synergy
- Corporate code for upcoming layoffs
- AOL Time Warner
- Lost $99 billion, still the worst ever
- Mega-deals
- Trillions spent yearly chasing the same dream
- Culture clash
- Kills more mergers than bad math does
exxon mobil — exxon and mobil merged in 1999, creating the world's largest oil company at the time
aol time warner — aol acquired time warner in 2000 for $165 billion, one of the largest mergers in history
microsoft activision — microsoft acquired activision blizzard in 2023 for $68.7 billion, the largest gaming industry deal ever