MERGERS AND PROFITABILITY: A MANAGERIAL SUCCESS STORY?*
调查英国前500强公司中146家的并购活动，发现管理者普遍认为并购提升了公司绩效，尤其是小规模并购更容易整合且不会导致控制权丧失和业绩下滑。
ABSTRACT Since 1983 expenditure on acquisitions in the UK has more than doubled in real terms, despite the fact that the consensus of opinion in the academic literature is that acquisitions are not, on average, performance enhancing for the acquiring firm. Such literature, however, relates mainly to the acquisition of large, public companies. Drawing on survey evidence from 146 of the UK's top 500 companies, this article reports the results from a survey which encompasses all takeovers. The study revealed that is the expected reward of increased profitabililty which is used in ex‐post evaluation. The major finding of the study is, however, that managers firmly perceive that their takeover activity has been performance enhancing for their company. The evidence presented does suggest that the integration of small acquisitions into an existing organizational structure may be achieved without severe problems of loss of control, and the subsequent decline in performance which beset large acquisitions