Although in a complex environment, such as business in the world today, these processes also involve large economic risks, many companies are choosing to merge with others to avoid collapse. Let’s see some notorious examples.

1. Some of the
biggest mergers
and acquisitions
cases ever
By Suzzanne UhlandImage courtesy of Mike Mozart at Pexels.com

2. The concept of mergers and acquisitions in
today's business world is increasingly present in
the minds of many businessmen. The main reason
behind this way of rebuilding companies is to
create wealth for the shareholders who are at
the head of the companies. Although in a
complex environment, such as business in the
world today, these processes also involve large
economic risks, many companies are choosing
to merge with others to avoid collapse. Let’s see
some notorious examples.

3. Vodafone - Mannesmann
In 2000, the German telecoms group
Mannesmann agreed to merge with Britain's
Vodafone Airtouch, which had launched the
largest stock offer in history. Both companies
produced a forty-two million customers giant in
fifteen countries of the world, trading in London
and Frankfurt. The value of the whole operation
was two hundred million euros. After several
months of resistance, most of the shareholders of
Mannesmann accepted the offer of purchase
made by Vodafone AirTouch.

4. Verizon - Vodafone
Thirteen years later, Verizon Communications closed
an agreement with Vodafone to buy 45% of its
capital held by the British company for $ 130 billion.
This was actually the third most important corporate
operation in history. This sale meant an important
injection of liquidity for the British company because
with that money Vodafone had sufficient resources
to continue expanding in Europe and Asia. Verizon
Wireless is still the number one mobile phone
operator in the United States, and it's really a quite
mature market. Due to the solidity of this company
and its capacity of expansion in different markets of
the world, the British company agreed to merge in
leviathanic proportions.

5. Pfizer - Warner-Lambert
In February 2000, Pfizer, the creator of Viagra, closed
the purchase of Warner-Lambert for $ 90 billion. This
merger made the new company the second largest
in the world. In fact, at that time, Pfizer Inc. had an
annual budget of $ 4.7 billion in research alone, and
thanks to that operation, the company developed
more than 140 new products, including cancer
drugs, medicines for treating nervous system
diseases and cardiovascular problems. During the
first three years, the growth of this new company
was 25%, and this increase was mainly due to the
implemented system for reducing operating costs,
which saved about 1.6 billion dollars.

6. Dow Chemical - DuPont
Since 2015, a $ 130 billion deal to merge the two
companies was being managed this year. This
operation was authorized by the competition
regulators of the European Commission in Brussels.
The only court's condition was that DuPont should
sell most of its global pesticide business to avoid
reducing price competition for herbicides, grains,
and insecticides abroad.

7. The big two US agrochemical giants, Dow
Chemical and DuPont, announced their merger
and subsequent split into three new businesses.
The first one, an agricultural business for producing
seeds, pesticides, and other inputs, with an annual
sales potential of 19 billion dollars. The second one
will be focused on industrial materials, with
average annual sales of 51 billion dollars. The third
one will produce and distribute goods for the
biosciences, electronics and security sectors, with
sales of 13,000 million dollars. After the first part of
the process, the two-headed monster, which was
a larger company than Basf, was named Dow
DuPont.

8. America Online (AOL) - Time Warner
17 years ago, the Internet giant of the nineties and
the world leader of leisure and communication
announced their merger, one of the largest in
history, and, at the time, it was the cause one of the
most valuable companies in the world. Before the
news spread, both companies were worth 247 billion
dollars in the stock, but after the merger, they
revalued in a little more than 10%. This great
foundational act of the 21st century was not only a
successful merger in terms of the distribution and
expansion of the wealth and market of both titans
but also proved to be an excellent combination of
users, knowledge, capital and services.

9. In fact, this was the first press and digital
communication company in history, and the
combined turnover of the two groups exceeded thirty
billion dollars.
Although both groups were divided nine years later,
the company that was formed was a unique and
necessary pioneer. AOL Time Warner were the
forerunners in the development of online media (a
general rule today, indeed.) Of course, this merger is
an example that everything is not perfect when it
comes to this type of operations. Time Warner Inc.
decided to get rid of AOL after spending almost a
decade trying to create a journalistic empire.

10. Actually, it finished in a weaker position than when
the association began. After this breakup, Time
Warner focused on producing movies, cable
television networks such as HBO and CNN, as well as
publishing magazines, including Time, People and
Sports Illustrated. Some say this is one of the worst
Failures in corporate history in the United States, and
leads us to think a topic for a future post: Why some
merger and acquisitions fail?
Read also: Mergers and acquisitions: A smart
measure for tough times, by Suzzanne Uhland