By Jim Jeffries, Chairman M&A Leadership Council
Historic data claims that mergers hold great promise, but rarely meet expectations. In reading the statistics published by research firms and endorsed by a variety of consulting companies, successful mergers are so rare that only 17% of all transactions achieve the expectations set by management at announcement. These statistics say half haven’t even earned the cost of capital and therefore would have destroyed shareholder value. If that’s correct, the majority never created shareholder value.