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  3. Companies have embarked on what looks like the beginnings of a re-run of the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) wave that defined th

Companies have embarked on what looks like the beginnings of a re-run of the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) wave that defined th

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问题     Companies have embarked on what looks like the beginnings of a re-run of the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) wave that defined the second bubbly half of the 1990s. That period was characterized by a collective splurge that saw the creation of some of the most indebted companies in history. Many of them later went bankrupt or were themselves broken up. Wild bidding for telecoms, internet and media assets, not to mention the madness that was Daimler’s $40 billion motoring takeover in 1998-1999 of Chrysler or the Time-Warner/AOL mega-merger in 2000, helped to give mergers a thoroughly bad name. A consensus emerged that M&A was a great way for investment banks to reap rich fees, and a sure way for ambitious managers to betray investors by trashing the value of their shares.
    Now M&A is back. Its return is a global phenomenon, but it is probably most striking in Europe, where so far this year there has been a stream of deals worth more than $600 billion in total, around 40% higher than in the same period of 2004. The latest effort came this week when France’s Saint-Gobain, a building-materials firm, unveiled the details of its ￡3.6 billion hostile bid for BPB, a British rival. In the first half of the year, cross-border activity was up threefold over the same period last year. Even France Telecom, which was left almost bankrupt at the end of the last merger wave, recently bought Amena, a Spanish mobile operator.
    Shareholder’s approval of all these deals raises an interesting question for companies everywhere: are investors right to think that these mergers are more likely to succeed than earlier ones? There are two answers. The first is that past mergers may have been judged too harshly. The second is that the present rash of European deals does look more rational, but—and the caveat is crucial—only so far. The pattern may not hold.
    M&A’s poor reputation stems not only from the string of spectacular failures in the 1990s, but also from studies which showed value destruction for acquiring shareholders in 80% of deals. But more recent studies by economists have introduced a note of caution. Investors should look at the number of deals that succeed or fail (typically measured by the impact on the share price), rather than (as you might think) weighing them by size. For instance, no one doubts that the Daimler-Chrysler merger destroyed value. The combined market value of the two firms is still below that of Daimler alone before the deal. This single deal accounted for half of all German M&A activity by value in 1998 and 1999, and probably dominated people’s thinking about mergers to the same degree. Throw in a few other such monsters and it is no wonder that broad studies have tended to find that mergers are a bad idea. The true picture is more complicated.
The case of Daimler-Chrysler mentioned in the text serves as
选项 A、an illustration of an evaluation criterion.
B、an explanation of a spectacular failure.
C、a discussion of a mobile operator.
D、a guarantee of a harsh judgement.
答案A
解析 这是一道细节题，测试考生识别和理解上下句之间关系的能力。本题的答案信息来源在尾段，尤其是尾段的第三、四句，关键在于第三句，其大意是：“投资者不要只考虑合并和收购的规模，相反应该考虑合并和收购成功或失败的数量。”此句主要阐述投资者的权衡标准，故本题的正确选项应该是A“an illustration of an evaluation criterion”(举例说明评估的标准)。考生在阅读时要重视上下句之间的关系，以免造成答题时的时间浪费。
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