‘Soft Issues’ in Mergers and Acquisitions

In recent years, hardly a month passed without a major merger or acquisition. These corporate mergers focus on the creation of shareholder value and the use of synergies that should result from the combination of the best features of the resolved companies. However, in reality, these goals are hardly achieved. Merged companies often do not grow and merge in the way they are supposed to and the hoped for enhanced performance is often not achieved, since the so-called “Soft Issues”, found in most merger processes, have been paid insufficient attention. These factors are the main focus of the analysis of this book. This study does, in fact, not deal with the whole process of a corporate merger, but focuses on the most important and difficult phase to plan ahead: the post-merger phase, as it is exactly in this phase that ``soft issues'' play a major role. It illustrates the interplay of a large variety of soft issues and demonstrates how these can be avoided during the phases of a merger and acquisition.