Are Oil Industry Mergers Becoming Less Profitable?

Are oil industry mergers becoming less profitable? This study evaluates oil industry consolidations that occur during the sixteen-year time frame between 1998 and 2013 to find out. This quantitative study focuses on the stock price total return performance of acquirer companies over a four year horizon for each merger transaction. The portfolios created from these transactions provide for an analysis of the economics of the mergers after full integration of target companies. Four benchmarks are incorporated to provide various economic adjustment factors. There are seven cases presented that show that oil industry mergers are becoming less profitable. Implications are that companies may chase mergers as an easy way to increase returns, but this may not occur. As ever larger companies chase the remaining players and bid up their selling prices, increased returns may not always be the outcome. Keywords: Oil Industry Mergers, 1998-2013, Brent Crude Oil JEL Classifications: G15, G34, P1

Mergers and acquisitions in the construction industry: an exploratory study

Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) are major strategic initiatives undertaken by many organisations. Within the construction context, these have been used, amongst others, to accelerate growth, reduce the effects of the construction cycle, enter into new markets, and spread risk. During the last decade, M&A were recognised as the preferred vehicle for expansion into the global construction market. Major European and international construction organisations use mergers or acquisitions to increase their geographical coverage and business portfolio. Mergers and Acquisitions impact on a number of organisational dimensions ranging from `soft' issues such as organisational culture to `hard' issues such as IT integration. Four specific aspects of mergers and acquisitions are investigated within this thesis. These are as follows: Strategy, Business Portfolio and Performance Measurement of construction organisations and the impact of M&A on subsequent performance; the Acquisition Strategy adopted for entering emerging markets such as Central and Eastern Europe; the Impact of Mergers and Acquisitions on construction companies' Information Systems and Information Technology (IS/IT); and an Investigation of Knowledge Management Strategies for organisations that have undergone mergers and acquisitions. The thesis adopts a qualitative research methodology. An extensive literature review was conducted on mergers and acquisitions with particular emphasis on its use within the construction sector. The literature review provided a sound basis for theory development and identified areas in which further understanding was requiired. A multiple case study approach was selected for each of the four aspects studied and the data was obtained using semi-structured interviews. Based on the case study data, analysis and discussion were conducted resulting in conclusions for each of the four aspects investigated. The research concluded that Mergers and Acquisitions were an important vehicle for construction organisations to achieve growth, and expand geographically into new markets and new sectors. However,. the implications of mergers and acquisitions need to be understood and the processes . before, during and after the merger or acquisition is finalised need to be carefully planned and communicated to the relevant parties. Mergers and Acquisitions'- can offer' tremendous advantage to an organisation and several recommendations are made regarditig how the process may be improved within the construction context

Value co-creation in ICT services company: a case study of a cross-border acquisition

Post-merger and acquisition (M&A) integration is especially important for the services industry, where value co-creation between actors plays crucial role. This paper is a qualitative single case study of a multinational company (MNE) in information technology (ICT) industry, and the post-acquisition processes of its subsidiary in Russia. The main contribution of this article is the application of a value co-creation view, which until now has only been applied in the field of service industry research, to the settings of the international business. We also identify the actors and their roles and activities in the value co-creation in the Russian context

Critical Success Factors for ERP system upgrades – The Case of a German large-scale Enterprise

The aim of our study was to gain insight into the research field of critical success factors (CSFs) of enterprise resource planning (ERP) projects, especially the post-implementation phase, with specific focus on system upgrades as an essential part of this phase. Therefore, we conducted a systematic literature review in order to update the existing reviews of CSFs. On the basis of that review, we conducted a single case study within a German large-scale enterprise in the service sector. As a result, we could show that all 31 factors found in the literature review also affect the success of ERP system upgrades. Eight of the top 10 CSFs ranked as most important in the literature review also appear in the top 10 for upgrade projects. However, other factors gained or lost importance considerably in comparison to the literature review

Business model innovation in the oil and gas supply industry

Master i Energy Management - Nord universitet, 201

Location Advantages, Governance Quality, Stock Market Development and Firm Characteristics as Antecedents of African M&As

This study explores firm- and country-specific antecedents of African M&As. We use one of the largest datasets to-date consisting of 1,490 unique African firms (11,183 firm-year observations) from 1996 to 2012. Our results suggest that improvements in time-varying country-level factors, including location advantages (market size, human capital and efficiency opportunities), national governance quality, and stock market development are associated with an increase in the volume of M&A activity. Consistent with the resource-curse paradox, high resource endowments are not associated with increased levels of M&A. In support of the management inefficiency but contrary to the traditional firm size hypotheses, African targets are generally characterised by declining stock returns and accounting profitability but are more likely to be larger firms; suggesting the presence of information asymmetry concerns in their selection. Notwithstanding, we find evidence of heterogeneity across countries with inconsistent support for established target prediction hypotheses. A model which combines firm- and country- specific factors better explains observed variations in African M&A activity

Building Organizational (Dis-)Abilities: The impact of learning on the performance of mergers and acquisitions

As the number and size of merger and acquisition (M&A) deals increases globally, firms need to learn how to successfully execute M&As. There are three main ways in which this learning occurs. First, firms learn experientially, i.e., from their experience. Second, they learn contextually by deliberately observing the characteristics of the target firm and how the relationship with the target evolves over time before making consequential decisions. Third, they learn vicariously, i.e. by monitoring the behavior of third parties in order to draw relevant information on when, what, and how to acquire. \nIn the three studies that comprise this dissertation, I contribute to existing knowledge on the relation between learning and M&A performance by investigating learning dynamics that are unaddressed in the literature. In the first study, I analyze the impact of firms\xe2\x80\x99 domestic M&A experience on the performance of their cross-border acquisitions. In the second study, I examine how the response of an acquirer to a target\xe2\x80\x99s pre-deal performance affects the relation between the top management teams (TMTs) of the firms, reverberating, ultimately, on post-deal performance. In the third study, I investigate how the reactions of market participants, such as investors and financial analysts, to an acquisition announcement reduce information asymmetries between the acquirer and the target thereby influencing the acquirer\xe2\x80\x99s decision to proceed or abandon an initiated deal. Together, these studies present a more nuanced, counterintuitive perspective on the role of information and learning in the context of M&A