The M&A Dream Team: Who Exactly Are the Parties in Mergers and Acquisitions?

In M&As, each party holds a mirror up to the other, trying to reflect not only a business proposition, but also any weaknesses in the other party that could affect the deal. Teams on both sides work hard to uncover these details.

The concept of Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) dates back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries, prominently marked by the Great Merger Movement in the United States. The era is characterized by huge and more frequent consolidations when many small companies merged, forming much greater ones and creating one monopoly after another in such leading commodity industries as railroads, steel, and oil. Killing competition and total control over supply chains were the main motives, promoting considerable changes in legislation concerning antitrust laws.

M&As are characterized by different entities coming together with the express intention of forming more competitive and synergistic enterprises. Participants in the processes of M&As vary in size and scope-from large global corporations that seek to expand their market dominance to small startups that would like to leverage their innovative technologies by partnering with larger companies.

Each party enters into a transaction with explicit roles and motivations, mainly based on its strategic business goals…