History is littered with disastrous mergers – here’s how to avoid one

Katharine Byrne, Head of the BDO Deal Advisory team and a member of the BDO International M&A Group recently featured in The Irish Times Special Report on Mergers & Acquisitions.

Sometimes even the most promising mergers can go awry. History is littered with disastrous corporate marriages, such as the $37 billion (€34 billion) merger between Daimler and Chrysler that left the former selling the latter for just $7 billion nine years later. Microsoft’s $7.2 billion acquisition of Nokia’s mobile phone operation in 2014 was equally ill starred and within two years it was sold off for just $350 million.