The Strategic Management of Mergers and Acquisitions ‘Developing a Resource-Based Perspective” Case Study: Guinness Ghana Breweries Ltd

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2009-06-07
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Mergers and acquisitions play a vital role in a firm’s competitive scope within the same industry. Competition is a major challenge faced by many companies. It grows more intense every year. New competition comes from all directions-from local competitors and from global competitors eager to grow sales in new markets. A company has competitive advantage whenever it has an edge over rivals in attracting customers and defending against competitive forces. A company can achieve or defend competitive advantage through the strategy it employs. Mergers and acquisitions is one of such corporate strategy that can be used. This is so because although Mergers and Acquisitions have been used by firms to obtain competitive advantage hence this current research try to examine the impact of Mergers and Acquisitions from a resource-base perspective using Guinness Ghana Limited is a test case. Various literature on the subject were reviewed which attempted to link it to the current research. Notable among the research techniques used in assessing the impact included various financial ratios such as profitability, activity, liquidity, gearing and shareholder. With respect to profitability ratios, the performance of the individual companies was better than that of the group. This was because with the return on capital employed which deals with the organisation’ s ability to use its net assets to generate income, the individual companies did better with 54.7% and 41.7% in 2003 and 2004 respectively whilst the group in 2005 had 29%. This means that the companies were more efficient in using their net assets to generate profit in 2003. The group’s performance in 2005 was not very impressive as compared to previous years. This might be partly due to a less than a proportionate increase in profit before interest and tax (PBIT) for the group in 2005 in relation to that of the individual companies in 2003 and 2004, or/and a more than proportionate increase in the company’s administrative expenses in 2005. It is also recommended that further studies be carried out in the case of the merger between the companies under study in the years to come. This is to find out whether the group’s performance will continue to deteriorate to replicate this study or that somewhere along the line the group’s performance will change for the better in order to justify the reason for the merger. Should further studies in the merger seem to suggest or conclude that, the group performance is worse, then, there is absolutely more solid ground to believe that mergers should be given a second thought in an attempt to survive in a global market place.
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A Thesis submitted to the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology School of Business, Kumasi in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Master of Business Administration Degree, 2009
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