A CEO roundtable on making mergers succeed

The announcement in January of the merger between America Online and Time W arner marked the convergence of the two most important business trends of t he last five years -the rise of the Internet and the resurgence of mergers and acquisitions. M&A activity is at a fever pitch, spurred in large part b y the breathtaking influx of capital into the Internet space. And all signs indicate the trend will only accelerate. Against this background, an impressive group of experienced deal makers cam e together to share their experiences of what makes mergers work. They were assembled in Scottsdale, Arizona, under the auspices of the M&A Group, a p rofessional society formed in 1999 for CEOs interested in M&A as a business strategy. Participants included top executives from Internet start-ups lik e Teligent; venture capital firms like Baroda Ventures; financial instituti ons like Merrill Lynch and Pricewaterhouse Coopers; and major corporations like Allstate, Tyco International, SmithKline Beecham, Rohm and Haas, VF, C rown Cork & Seal, and Hughes Space and Communications. The spirited a nd surprisingly frank discussion cut a wide swath, consideri ng issues such as whether most mergers fail to pan out as well as expected, how to increase the odds of success, the nuts and bolts of the integration process, the trade-offs between acquiring a company and growing from withi n, the importance of cultural issues, and why anyone would want to be on th e board of a merged company.