Europe Economy

10 Pages 2602 Words

INTRODUCTION

In recent years, cross-border mergers and acquisitions have grabbed the headlines in Europe. Even hostile takeovers, long thought to be an exclusively American phenomena, starting becoming more common in Europe. This is underscored by the fact that the world's largest hostile takeover was Vodafone AUD$302 billions hostile takeover of Germany's Mannesmann AG (European Commission, 2001). In addition to deals within Europe, trans-Atlantic deals, with European buyers of U.S companies and vice versa, started to become commonplace. With the development of European Union (EU) and the erosion of nationalistic barriers as the continent moved to a unified market structure with a common currency, companies began to see their market as all of Europe and more. It became clear that a European consolidation was in order. Although there are many indications that there will be realizable benefits from such a consolidation, only time reveal the magnitude of these benefits. Furthermore, the European Commission face dilemmas when confronted with this emergence of giant European companies with extensive market power in Europe. This essay outlines three issues. (1) The cause of this extensive growth of mergers and acquisitions in European Union (2) The effect on the movement towards Single Market on businesses (3) The impact of the emerging giant European companies on European Commission will be discussed.





GROWING PHENOMENON OF MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS IN EU
Acquisitions and mergers have been popular strategy among firms in Europe. In the third quarter of 1999, for the first time the dollar volume of merger and acquisition transactions announced in Europe exceeded the value in United States. A merger is a strategy through which two firms agree to integrate their operations on a relatively co-equal basis because they have resources and capabilities that together may create a stronger competitive advantage. An acquis...