Astitva.... The Fountainhead

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Mergers and Acquisitions.... Part II

It is rather interesting how the sequence of events take place. No later that I had written my previous article on Mergers and Acquisitions on January 13, P&G decided to buy out Gillete making one of the world's bigest consumer products manufacturers. The deal was struck at an whopping price of 55B. Talk about brand value!!
A couple of other meger/takeover announcements also followed in the month of January
And if this was not enough, The Economist decided to go in print with my theory as well in their 5th Feb issue.

I am still undecided on whether I should go ahead sue Economist on publishing this Industrial Economics article idea that I published first. Let us see how far can this be argued in the intellectual property scene. I think I may be able to pull it off, considering the kind of ridiculous intellectual properties are being given protection. Right from Microsoft Patenting an Apple tree. Thanks to Anshul's post for this piece of information.

But let me not stray away from the topic in hand. The world of intellectual property rights is very close to my heart and I would be more than willing to debate on this at any time and dedicate a couple of articles on it as well.
So, going back to Mergers and Acquisitions, I have a feeling that in the near future, the industry most likely to be impacted would be the Mobile Telcom industry. There is one factor that may prevent it from happenning though. Most mergers by nature are in industries that are mature and have already seen tough competition. These industries still compete but they have realised that there is no longer a need to drive out the other big players to say in the market. On the other hand, they now focus on diversifying operations so that they can survive the test of time. It's based on the ever stated theory of self preservation. Business would be based in industries that show complementory performance in the economic cycle of the industries. So recession or no recession, the company tends ot survive. But for the above reason, there is high chance of mergers in the Mobile Telcom industry.

What impact does this have on a consumer, is a tough question. I showed you one perspective of it in my previous article, however radical was the sound of it. Such economic chain of events are open to intrepretation. What is causng it? what will they cause? What impact would that have on me?
These questions would be answered with time!!