Mergers and Acquisitions Tasha Powers Dr. Michael Laverty Business 508 – Contemporary Business November 17, 2014

A merger or acquisition is a combination of two companies where one corporation is completely absorbed by another corporation. The less essential company loses its identity and becomes part of the more imperative corporation, which retains its identity. A merger extinguishes the merged corporation, and the surviving corporation assumes all the rights, privileges, and liabilities of the merged corporation (Gomes, 2011). A merger is not the same as a consolidation, in which two corporations lose their separate identities and unite to form a completely new corporation. Federal and state laws regulate mergers and acquisitions. Regulation is based on the concern that mergers inevitably eliminate competition between the merging firms (Helms, 1996). This concern is most delicate where the participants are direct rivals, because courts often presume that such arrangements are more prone to restrict output and to increase prices. The fear that mergers and acquisitions reduce competition has meant that the government carefully scrutinizes proposed mergers. On the other hand, since the 1980s, the federal government has become less aggressive in seeking the prevention of mergers (Gomes, 2011). Mergers appear in three forms, based on the competitive relationships between the merging parties. In a horizontal merger, one firm acquires another firm that produces and sells an identical or similar product in the same geographic area and thereby eliminates competition between the two firms. In a vertical merger, one firm acquires either a customer or a supplier. Conglomerate mergers encompass all other acquisitions, including pure conglomerate transactions where the merging parties have no evident