So let's look at some, both successful and unsuccessful, mergers and acquisitions.
One of the most studied one is the one between the German firm Daimler Benz,
the car manufacturer and Chrysler from the United States.
It was highly celebrated when it was created in the year of 1995,
but it lasted until the year of 2007.
The reasons why this merger and acquisition didn't work,
this integration of these two firms didn't work,
it's has been said, was the clash of cultures.
They really did never integrate the corporate culture of both firms.
Both Germans and
Americans did not really understand very well how the other side worked.
Another problem was that they created this single firm but
they did not create a real global brand.
I mean, throughout these almost a decade, a little bit more than a decade of
creation of this single firm, people around the world still thought about
Mercedes Benz or Chrysler as two separate brands.
I mean the idea of a single product or a single brand related to
a single products really did not permeate people's lives.
And this is something that was a problem of coordination
among those in the two firms.
Both firms believed they were at the top of the world in what they did, and
this is something that, eventually, created clashes and, finally,
the end of these ventures.
Now let's take a look at Walmart, in Canada, Australia,
and Chile, where it expanded through mergers and acquisitions.
In this case, however, Walmart succeeded at
acquiring firms that were involved already in the low cost retail service and
that had created very good supply channels and networks in their countries.
There was not a really big culture clash in between Walmart and
the Target firms, because they all had similar cultures.
And in this way, Walmart could take advantage
of these supply chains that these firms have developed.
And they allowed Walmart to enter in a smooth and
successful way in these countries.
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