Avoiding the M&A failure trap

Global Finance interviewed Feng Gu about why so many mergers and acquisitions (M&A) fail. Together with Baruch Lev from New York University, they recently published “The M&A Failure Trap: Why So Many Mergers and Acquisitions Fail, and How the Few Succeed” (Wiley). They discussed their findings, and the lessons they drew for would be acquirers. “The human element is a frequently ignored aspect of M&A, and we put a lot of effort into uncovering some previously unknown, important patterns concerning the behavior of employees around the time of acquisition,” Gu said.