Winning the Merger Endgame: A Playbook for Profiting From Industry Consolidation

Rating:
Summary: Consolidation rules discovered
Review: I read this book with great interest. Working in retail for more than 10 years now, this book matched my experience and helps me to forecast what might happen in my industry over the next couple of years. Although I - as well as many other readers - have an idea of what could happen or what is probably, this book with the underlying research of thousands of companies over more than 10 years and the expertise of a consulting powerhouse brings the findings to the point and quantifies them. The only small disadvantage is the title: as the book is not only focusing on mergers, but on consolidation trends as a whole (therefore also valid in times where consolidation trends are fought via price wars and organic growth).

I would already speculate that this book will become a real classic and I recommend it to any strategist, CEO or CFO interested in the mechanics of consolidation trends and finding long term survival strategies.

Rating:
Summary: Great book, compelling paradigm
Review: In a glut of milquetoast business books, "Winning the Merger Endgame" stands out as a gem. The combination of solid research, analysis and writing style results in a credible, useful book that anyone interested in business should read. The heart of the book is a model that describes and predicts how industries consolidate. It's a compelling discovery that will undoubtedly change--and chart--business strategies for years. Bottom line: read it and use it.

Rating:
Summary: Original thinking on M&A
Review: This is the first original thinking on M&A that I've seen recently. Most of the M&A books go on and on about why mergers work or don't work. Winning the Merger Endgame talks about M&A in terms of its effect on industries and how they consolidate and change over time. The endgames model is intriguingly displayed as an S curve. I would only quibble slightly over the horizontal time axis, which makes the time span for each stage seem more specific than it probably is. But the research is solid and long-term.