Despite their increasing importance as strategic options for corporate growth mergers, acquisitions, and alliances often fail. Kathrin Bösecke analyses the factors that determine the success, i.e., value creation for shareholders, of business combinations. Her analysis of 126 acquisitions and 66 alliances in the European utility industry provides new and interesting results. For example, the origin of the participating firms as well as the target country of the business combination can be considered as essential determinants of value creation. Furthermore, acquisitions and alliances are better suited to some markets and regions than others.

Autorentext
Dr. Kathrin Bösecke completed her doctoral thesis at Jacobs University Bremen.

Zusammenfassung
About ten years ago, the network-oriented markets for electricity and natural gas were opened. The formerly vertically integrated companies were partly disintegrated, the regional or local monopolies were removed, and customers received the possibility to choose their supplier as in other industries. This led to fundamental changes in the market structure. In an industry with relatively low growth of demand, companies were looking for additional growth and at the same time reacted to competitive pressures. Often mergers, acquisitions, and alliances were the strategic answer. The period of beginning liberalisation is, therefore, also a period of intranational and international attempts to join forces in order to prepare for competition. How successful are such attempts? In this book, Kathrin Bösecke gives the answer based on an empirical study using a large data set and identifies success factors for business combinations in the utility industry. This study is of great interest for economists studying the impacts of business strategies as well as for practioners in finance and the utility industry observing the market development in the utility sector. Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Pfaffenberger Preface Doing research can be stressful and frustrating, but when it yields exciting results it can also be very rewarding. There were a number of people, during the course of this research, who gave advice or offered encouragement and good cheer when needed.

Inhalt
Fundamentals.- Value creation in mergers and acquisitions theoretical paradigms and past research.- Value creation in alliances a meta-analysis.- A quantitative analysis of value creation in business combinations in the European utility industry.- Summary.