Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Are the Latest Big Deals Really a Big Deal? - New York Times

Are the Latest Big Deals Really a Big Deal? - New York Times "While Wall Street has been abuzz about a recent run of high-profile mergers and acquisitions, many of them - including yesterday's $5.8 billion acquisition of Siebel by Oracle, eBay's $2.6 billion buyout of Skype and Wachovia's $3.4 billion acquisition of Westcorp - happen to be pretty humdrum.
While these deals are often dressed up as radical industry-changing events, they are hardly like the big transactions announced in the late 1990's and early 2000 that tried to revolutionize business models and redefine markets - among them, the merger of Citicorp and Travelers or Vivendi's merger with Seagram. Today's deals are basic add-ons - a homeowner adding a room to a house, not a gut renovation. On Wall Street, these deals are called bolt-ons."

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