THE IMPORTANCE OF POST-ACQUISITION INTEGRATION FOR VALUE CREATION AND SUCCESS OF MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS

Companies often resort to mergers and acquisitions in order to gain access to new markets, introduce new products, expand their knowledge-base or improve the competitive advantage. Achieving success in mergers and acquisitions represents complex managerial challenges, as a great number of these transactions fail in creating value for shareholders. Post-acquisition integration is the most challenging phase during which value creation should be involved, but which may also involve numerous integration problems. This study puts an emphasis on the success factors of the post-acquisition integration of companies, such as an integration strategy, the composition of the integration team, communications, the speed of the integration process and the uniformity of measurements. A special emphasis is put on the importance of the speed of integration as a success factor of the post-acquisition integration of companies.