Meta-analysis of post-acquisition integration: a comparison of three cases

Abstract

Mergers and acquisitions have become the major entry mode among the globalization strategies, and in the last decade they are becoming more and more established by Chinese firms: in the huge amount of FDI, outbound mergers and acquisitions accounted for the largest proportion, reaching a higher peak in 2016. The drivers triggering this surge in investments are several: the shift towards acquisition of technology and know-how, trademarks acquisition, scarcity of attractive domestic assets, and supportive financing and political environment. For many years, the Chinese government made effort and invested resources for M&A opportunities primarily to support its economy. But today there is a new focus on gaining market share and core capabilities. Chinese outbound M&A deals now work to acquire technology, consumer goods, finance, media and telecommunications organizations, in order to include more diversified industries. The objective of this thesis is to analyze first the background in which mergers and acquisitions are being established, then focusing on the post-acquisition integration process, that is the M&A phase in which most variables join together and affect the performance of the new business entity. In the second section, three case studies are taken into account: Geely’s acquisition of Volvo, Midea’s acquisition of Kuka and ChemChina’s acquisition of Syngenta. The three of them are individually analyzed and then compared in a meta-analysis aimed to research two different aspects: the first includes the research of the objectives of the M&A, as well as the importance Chinese investors give to integration and how they manage the integration process in order to meet the success of the M&A; the second part tries to analyze how Western and Chinese observers interpret these aspects of the acquisitions, whether their opinions are more differentiated within Western environment or between different cultural environments, and how opinions have changed throughout the time, from the pre-acquisition to the post-acquisition phase. The objective of this section is to analyze how much these opinions change between China and Western countries, whether common points of view can be found between the two cultural contexts. Moreover, we will analyze the change of these opinions through the years, in order to compare the interpretation of the M&A phenomenon with the performance of the M&A itself.