Exam 1: Introduction to Mergers, acquisitions, and Other Restructuring Activities

Holding companies and their shareholders may be subject to triple taxation.

The hubris motive for M&As refers to which of the following?

Which of the following is true only of a consolidation?

The Man Behind the Legend at Berkshire Hathaway Although not exactly a household name, Berkshire Hathaway ("Berkshire") has long been a high flier on Wall Street. The firm's share price has outperformed the total return on the Standard and Poor's 500 stock index in 32 of the 36 years that Warren Buffet has managed the firm. Berkshire Hathaway's share price rose from $12 per share to $71,000 at the end of 2000, an annual rate of growth of 27%. With revenue in excess of $30 billion, Berkshire is among the top 50 of the Fortune 500 companies. What makes the company unusual is that it is one of the few highly diversified companies to outperform consistently the S&P 500 over many years. As a conglomerate, Berkshire acquires or makes investments in a broad cross-section of companies. It owns operations in such diverse areas as insurance, furniture, flight services, vacuum cleaners, retailing, carpet manufacturing, paint, insulation and roofing products, newspapers, candy, shoes, steel warehousing, uniforms, and an electric utility. The firm also has "passive" investments in such major companies as Coca-Cola, American Express, Gillette, and the Washington Post. Warren Buffet's investing philosophy is relatively simple. It consists of buying businesses that generate an attractive sustainable growth in earnings and leaving them alone. He is a long-term investor. Synergy among his holdings never seems to play an important role. He has shown a propensity to invest in relatively mundane businesses that have a preeminent position in their markets; he has assiduously avoided businesses he felt that he did not understand such as those in high technology industries. He also has shown a tendency to acquire businesses that were "out of favor" on Wall Street. He has built a cash-generating machine, principally through his insurance operations that produce "float" (i.e., premium revenues that insurers invest in advance of paying claims). In 2000, Berkshire acquired eight firms. Usually flush with cash, Buffet has developed a reputation for being nimble. This most recently was demonstrated in his acquisition of Johns Manville in late 2000. Manville generated $2 billion in revenue from insulation and roofing products and more than $200 million in after-tax profits. Manville's controlling stockholder was a trust that had been set up to assume the firm's asbestos liabilities when Manville had emerged from bankruptcy in the late 1980s. After a buyout group that had offered to buy the company for $2.8 billion backed out of the transaction on December 8, 2000, Berkshire contacted the trust and acquired Manville for $2.2 billion in cash. By December 20, Manville and Berkshire reached an agreement. : -In what ways might Warren Buffet use "financial synergy" to grow Berkshire Hathaway? Explain your answer.

A statutory merger is a combination of two corporations in which only one corporation survives and the merged corporation goes out of existence.

Large investment banks invariably provide higher quality service and advice than smaller,so-called boutique investment banks.

Which of the following are not true about ESOPs?

Which of the following is an example of economies of scope?

A subsidiary merger is a merger of two companies where the target company becomes a subsidiary of the parent.

Pacific Surfware acquired Surferdude and as part of the transaction both of the firms ceased to exist in their form prior to the transaction and combined to create an entirely new entity,Wildly Exotic Surfware.Which one of the following terms best describes this transaction?

Xerox Buys ACS to Satisfy Shifting Customer Requirements In anticipation of a shift from hardware and software spending to technical services by their corporate customers, IBM announced an aggressive move away from its traditional hardware business and into services in the mid-1990s. Having sold its commodity personal computer business to Chinese manufacturer Lenovo in mid-2005, IBM became widely recognized as a largely "hardware neutral" systems integration, technical services, and outsourcing company. Because information technology (IT) services have tended to be less cyclical than hardware and software sales, the move into services by IBM enabled the firm to tap a steady stream of revenue at a time when customers were keeping computers and peripheral equipment longer to save money. The 2008-2009 recession exacerbated this trend as corporations spent a smaller percentage of their IT budgets on hardware and software. These developments were not lost on other IT companies. Hewlett-Packard (HP) bought tech services company EDS in 2008 for $13.9 billion. On September 21, 2009, Dell announced its intention to purchase another IT services company, Perot Systems, for $3.9 billion. One week later, Xerox, traditionally an office equipment manufacturer announced a cash and stock bid for Affiliated Computer Systems (ACS) totaling $6.4 billion. Each firm was moving to position itself as a total solution provider for its customers, achieving differentiation from its competitors by offering a broader range of both hardware and business services. While each firm focused on a somewhat different set of markets, they all shared an increasing focus on the government and healthcare segments. However, by retaining a large proprietary hardware business, each firm faced challenges in convincing customers that they could provide objectively enterprise-wide solutions that reflected the best option for their customers. Previous Xerox efforts to move beyond selling printers, copiers, and supplies and into services achieved limited success due largely to poor management execution. While some progress in shifting away from the firm's dependence on printers and copier sales was evident, the pace was far too slow. Xerox was looking for a way to accelerate transitioning from a product-driven company to one whose revenues were more dependent on the delivery of business services. With annual sales of about $6.5 billion, ACS handles paper-based tasks such as billing and claims processing for governments and private companies. With about one-fourth of ACS's revenue derived from the healthcare and government sectors through long-term contracts, the acquisition gives Xerox a greater penetration into markets which should benefit from the 2009 government stimulus spending and 2010 healthcare legislation. More than two-thirds of ACS's revenue comes from the operation of client back office operations such as accounting, human resources, claims management, and other business management outsourcing services, with the rest coming from providing technology consulting services. ACS would also triple Xerox's service revenues to $10 billion. Xerox hopes to increases its overall revenue by bundling its document management services with ACS's client back office operations. Only 20 percent of the two firms' customers overlap. This allows for significant cross-selling of each firm's products and services to the other firm's customers. Xerox is also betting that it can apply its globally recognized brand and worldwide sales presence to expand ACS internationally. A perceived lack of synergies between the two firms, Xerox's rising debt levels, and the firm's struggling printer business fueled concerns about the long-term viability of the merger, sending Xerox's share price tumbling by almost 10 percent on the news of the transaction. With about $1 billion in cash at closing in early 2010, Xerox needed to borrow about $3 billion. Standard & Poor's credit rating agency downgraded Xerox's credit rating to triple-B-minus, one notch above junk. Integration is Xerox's major challenge. The two firms' revenue mixes are very different, as are their customer bases, with government customers often requiring substantially greater effort to close sales than Xerox's traditional commercial customers. Xerox intends to operate ACS as a standalone business, which will postpone the integration of its operations consisting of 54,000 employees with ACS's 74,000. If Xerox intends to realize significant incremental revenues by selling ACS services to current Xerox customers, some degree of integration of the sales and marketing organizations would seem to be necessary. It is hardly a foregone conclusion that customers will buy ACS services simply because ACS sales representatives gain access to current Xerox customers. Presumably, additional incentives are needed, such as some packaging of Xerox hardware with ACS's IT services. However, this may require significant price discounting at a time when printer and copier profit margins already are under substantial pressure. Customers are likely to continue, at least in the near term, to view Xerox, Dell, and HP more as product than service companies. The sale of services will require significant spending to rebrand these companies so that they will be increasingly viewed as service vendors. The continued dependence of all three firms on the sale of hardware may retard their ability to sell packages of hardware and IT services to customers. With hardware prices under continued pressure, customers may be more inclined to continue to buy hardware and IT services from separate vendors to pit one vendor against another. Moreover, with all three firms targeting the healthcare and government markets, pressure on profit margins could increase for all three firms. The success of IBM's services strategy could suggest that pure IT service companies are likely to perform better in the long run than those that continue to have a significant presence in both the production and sale of hardware as well as IT services. : -Based on your answers to questions 1 and 2,do you believe that investors reacted correctly or incorrectly to the announcement of the transaction?

Mattel Overpays for The Learning Company Despite disturbing discoveries during due diligence, Mattel acquired The Learning Company (TLC), a leading developer of software for toys, in a stock-for-stock transaction valued at $3.5 billion on May 13, 1999. Mattel had determined that TLC's receivables were overstated because product returns from distributors were not deducted from receivables and its allowance for bad debt was inadequate. A $50 million licensing deal also had been prematurely put on the balance sheet. Finally, TLC's brands were becoming outdated. TLC had substantially exaggerated the amount of money put into research and development for new software products. Nevertheless, driven by the appeal of rapidly becoming a big player in the children's software market, Mattel closed on the transaction aware that TLC's cash flows were overstated. For all of 1999, TLC represented a pretax loss of $206 million. After restructuring charges, Mattel's consolidated 1999 net loss was $82.4 million on sales of $5.5 billion. TLC's top executives left Mattel and sold their Mattel shares in August, just before the third quarter's financial performance was released. Mattel's stock fell by more than 35% during 1999 to end the year at about $14 per share. On February 3, 2000, Mattel announced that its chief executive officer (CEO), Jill Barrad, was leaving the company. On September 30, 2000, Mattel virtually gave away The Learning Company to rid itself of what had become a seemingly intractable problem. This ended what had become a disastrous foray into software publishing that had cost the firm literally hundreds of millions of dollars. Mattel, which had paid $3.5 billion for the firm in 1999, sold the unit to an affiliate of Gores Technology Group for rights to a share of future profits. Essentially, the deal consisted of no cash upfront and only a share of potential future revenues. In lieu of cash, Gores agreed to give Mattel 50 percent of any profits and part of any future sale of TLC. In a matter of weeks, Gores was able to do what Mattel could not do in a year. Gores restructured TLC's seven units into three, set strong controls on spending, sifted through 467 software titles to focus on the key brands, and repaired relationships with distributors. Gores also has sold the entertainment division. : -Was this related or unrelated diversification for Mattel? How might this have influenced the outcome?

Market power is a theory that suggests that firms merge to improve their ability to set product and service selling prices.

A conglomerate merger is one in which a firm acquires other firms,which are highly related to its current core business.

Which of the following are generally not considered motives for mergers?

Around the announcement date of a merger or acquisition,abnormal returns to target firm shareholders normally average

Assessing Procter & Gamble's Acquisition of Gillette The potential seemed almost limitless, as Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) announced that it had completed its purchase of Gillette Company (Gillette) in late 2005. P&G's chairman and CEO, A.G. Lafley, predicted that the acquisition of Gillette would add one percentage point to the firm's annual revenue growth rate, while Gillette's chairman and CEO, Jim Kilts, opined that the successful integration of the two best companies in consumer products would be studied in business schools for years to come. Five years after closing, things have not turned out as expected. While cost savings targets were achieved, operating margins faltered due to lagging sales. Gillette's businesses, such as its pricey razors, have been buffeted by the 2008-2009 recession and have been a drag on P&G's top line rather than a boost. Moreover, most of Gillette's top managers have left. P&G's stock price at the end of 2010 stood about 12 percent above its level on the acquisition announcement date, less than one-fourth the appreciation of the share prices of such competitors as Unilever and Colgate-Palmolive Company during the same period. On January 28, 2005, P&G enthusiastically announced that it had reached an agreement to buy Gillette in a share-for-share exchange valued at $55.6 billion. This represented an 18 percent premium over Gillette's preannouncement share price. P&G also announced a stock buyback of $18 billion to $22 billion, funded largely by issuing new debt. The combined companies would retain the P&G name and have annual 2005 revenue of more than $60 billion. Half of the new firm's product portfolio would consist of personal care, healthcare, and beauty products, with the remainder consisting of razors and blades, and batteries. The deal was expected to dilute P&G's 2006 earnings by about 15 cents per share. To gain regulatory approval, the two firms would have to divest overlapping operations, such as deodorants and oral care. P&G had long been viewed as a premier marketing and product innovator. Consequently, P&G assumed that its R&D and marketing skills in developing and promoting women's personal care products could be used to enhance and promote Gillette's women's razors. Gillette was best known for its ability to sell an inexpensive product (e.g., razors) and hook customers to a lifetime of refills (e.g., razor blades). Although Gillette was the number 1 and number 2 supplier in the lucrative toothbrush and men's deodorant markets, respectively, it has been much less successful in improving the profitability of its Duracell battery brand. Despite its number 1 market share position, it had been beset by intense price competition from Energizer and Rayovac Corp., which generally sell for less than Duracell batteries. Suppliers such as P&G and Gillette had been under considerable pressure from the continuing consolidation in the retail industry due to the ongoing growth of Wal-Mart and industry mergers at that time, such as Sears and Kmart. About 17 percent of P&G's $51 billion in 2005 revenues and 13 percent of Gillette's $9 billion annual revenue came from sales to Wal-Mart. Moreover, the sales of both Gillette and P&G to Wal-Mart had grown much faster than sales to other retailers. The new company, P&G believed, would have more negotiating leverage with retailers for shelf space and in determining selling prices, as well as with its own suppliers, such as advertisers and media companies. The broad geographic presence of P&G was expected to facilitate the marketing of such products as razors and batteries in huge developing markets, such as China and India. Cumulative cost cutting was expected to reach $16 billion, including layoffs of about 4 percent of the new company's workforce of 140,000. Such cost reductions were to be realized by integrating Gillette's deodorant products into P&G's structure as quickly as possible. Other Gillette product lines, such as the razor and battery businesses, were to remain intact. P&G's corporate culture was often described as conservative, with a "promote-from-within" philosophy. While Gillette's CEO was to become vice chairman of the new company, the role of other senior Gillette managers was less clear in view of the perception that P&G is laden with highly talented top management. To obtain regulatory approval, Gillette agreed to divest its Rembrandt toothpaste and its Right Guard deodorant businesses, while P&G agreed to divest its Crest toothbrush business. The Gillette acquisition illustrates the difficulty in evaluating the success or failure of mergers and acquisitions for acquiring company shareholders. Assessing the true impact of the Gillette acquisition remains elusive, even after five years. Though the acquisition represented a substantial expansion of P&G's product offering and geographic presence, the ability to isolate the specific impact of a single event (i.e., an acquisition) becomes clouded by the introduction of other major and often uncontrollable events (e.g., the 2008-2009 recession) and their lingering effects. While revenue and margin improvement have been below expectations, Gillette has bolstered P&G's competitive position in the fast-growing Brazilian and Indian markets, thereby boosting the firm's longer-term growth potential, and has strengthened its operations in Europe and the United States. Thus, in this ever-changing world, it will become increasingly difficult with each passing year to identify the portion of revenue growth and margin improvement attributable to the Gillette acquisition and that due to other factors. : -Is this deal a merger or a consolidation from a legal standpoint? Explain your answer.

A joint venture rarely takes the legal form of a corporation.

Dell Moves into Information Technology Services Dell Computer's growing dependence on the sale of personal computers and peripherals left it vulnerable to economic downturns. Profits had dropped more than 22 percent since the start of the global recession in early 2008 as business spending on information technology was cut sharply. Dell dropped from number 1 to number 3 in terms of market share, as measured by personal computer unit sales, behind lower-cost rivals Hewlett-Packard and Acer. Major competitors such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard were less vulnerable to economic downturns because they derived a larger percentage of their sales from delivering services. Historically, Dell has grown "organically" by reinvesting in its own operations and through partnerships targeting specific products or market segments. However, in recent years, Dell attempted to "supercharge" its lagging growth through targeted acquisitions of new technologies. Since 2007, Dell has made ten comparatively small acquisitions (eight in the United States), purchased stakes in four firms, and divested two companies. The largest previous acquisition for Dell was the purchase of EqualLogic for $1.4 billion in 2007. The recession underscored what Dell had known for some time. The firm had long considered diversifying its revenue base from the more cyclical PC and peripherals business into the more stable and less commodity-like computer services business. In 2007, Dell was in discussions about a merger with Perot Systems, a leading provider of information technology (IT) services, but an agreement could not be reached. Dell's global commercial customer base spans large corporations, government agencies, healthcare providers, educational institutions, and small and medium firms. The firm's current capabilities include expertise in infrastructure consulting and software services, providing network-based services, and data storage hardware; nevertheless, it was still largely a manufacturer of PCs and peripheral products. In contrast, Perot Systems offers applications development, systems integration, and strategic consulting services through its operations in the United States and ten other countries. In addition, it provides a variety of business process outsourcing services, including claims processing and call center operations. Perot's primary markets are healthcare, government, and other commercial segments. About one-half of Perot's revenue comes from the healthcare market, which is expected to benefit from the $30 billion the U.S. government has committed to spending on information technology (IT) upgrades over the next five years. In 2008, Hewlett-Packard (HP) paid $13.9 billion for computer services behemoth, EDS, in an attempt to become a "total IT solutions" provider for its customers. This event, coupled with a very attractive offer price, revived merger discussions with Perot Systems. On September 21, 2009, Dell announced that an agreement had been reached to acquire Perot Systems in an all-cash offer for $30 a share in a deal valued at $3.9 billion. The tender offer (i.e., takeover bid) for all of Perot Systems' outstanding shares of Class A common stock was initiated in early November and completed on November 19, 2009, with Dell receiving more than 90 percent of Perot's outstanding shares. Mars Buys Wrigley in One Sweet Deal Under considerable profit pressure from escalating commodity prices and eroding market share, Wrigley Corporation, a U.S. based leader in gum and confectionery products, faced increasing competition from Cadbury Schweppes in the U.S. gum market. Wrigley had been losing market share to Cadbury since 2006. Mars Corporation, a privately owned candy company with annual global sales of $22 billion, sensed an opportunity to achieve sales, marketing, and distribution synergies by acquiring Wrigley Corporation. On April 28, 2008, Mars announced that it had reached an agreement to merge with Wrigley Corporation for $23 billion in cash. Under the terms of the agreement, unanimously approved by the boards of the two firms, shareholders of Wrigley would receive $80 in cash for each share of common stock outstanding. The purchase price represented a 28 percent premium to Wrigley's closing share price of $62.45 on the announcement date. The merged firms in 2008 would have a 14.4 percent share of the global confectionary market, annual revenue of $27 billion, and 64,000 employees worldwide. The merger of the two family-controlled firms represents a strategic blow to competitor Cadbury Schweppes's efforts to continue as the market leader in the global confectionary market with its gum and chocolate business. Prior to the announcement, Cadbury had a 10 percent worldwide market share. Wrigley would become a separate stand-alone subsidiary of Mars, with $5.4 billion in sales. The deal would help Wrigley augment its sales, marketing, and distribution capabilities. To provide more focus to Mars' brands in an effort to stimulate growth, Mars would transfer its global nonchocolate confectionery sugar brands to Wrigley. Bill Wrigley, Jr., who controls 37 percent of the firm's outstanding shares, would remain executive chairman of Wrigley. The Wrigley management team also would remain in place after closing. The combined companies would have substantial brand recognition and product diversity in six growth categories: chocolate, nonchocolate confectionary, gum, food, drinks, and pet-care products. The resulting confectionary powerhouse also would expect to achieve significant cost savings by combining manufacturing operations and have a substantial presence in emerging markets. While mergers among competitors are not unusual, the deal's highly leveraged financial structure is atypical of transactions of this type. Almost 90 percent of the purchase price would be financed through borrowed funds, with the remainder financed largely by a third party equity investor. Mars's upfront costs would consist of paying for closing costs from its cash balances in excess of its operating needs. The debt financing for the transaction would consist of $11 billion and $5.5 billion provided by J.P. Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, respectively. An additional $4.4 billion in subordinated debt would come from Warren Buffet's investment company, Berkshire Hathaway, a nontraditional source of high-yield financing. Historically, such financing would have been provided by investment banks or hedge funds and subsequently repackaged into securities and sold to long-term investors, such as pension funds, insurance companies, and foreign investors. However, the meltdown in the global credit markets in 2008 forced investment banks and hedge funds to withdraw from the high-yield market in an effort to strengthen their balance sheets. Berkshire Hathaway completed the financing of the purchase price by providing $2.1 billion in equity financing for a 9.1 percent ownership stake in Wrigley. : -Why was market share in the confectionery business an important factor in Mars' decision to acquire Wrigley?

America Online Acquires Time Warner: The Rise and Fall of an Internet and Media Giant Time Warner, itself the product of the world's largest media merger in a $14.1 billion deal a decade ago, celebrated its 10th birthday by announcing on January 10, 2000, that it had agreed to be taken over by America Online (AOL) at a 71% premium to its share price on the announcement date. AOL had proposed the acquisition in October 1999. In less than 3 months, the deal, valued at $160 billion as of the announcement date ($178 billion including Time Warner debt assumed by AOL), became the largest on record up to that time. AOL had less than one-fifth of the revenue and workforce of Time Warner, but AOL had almost twice the market value. As if to confirm the move to the new electronic revolution in media and entertainment, the ticker symbol of the new company was changed to AOL. However, the meteoric rise of AOL and its wunderkind CEO, Steve Case, to stardom was to be short-lived. Time Warner is the world's largest media and entertainment company, and it views its primary business as the creation and distribution of branded content throughout the world. Its major business segments include cable networks, magazine publishing, book publishing and direct marketing, recorded music and music publishing, and filmed entertainment consisting of TV production and broadcasting as well as interests in other film companies. The 1990 merger between Time and Warner Communications was supposed to create a seamless marriage of magazine publishing and film production, but the company never was able to put that vision into place. Time Warner's stock underperformed the market through much of the 1990s until the company bought the Turner Broadcasting System in 1996. Founded in 1985, AOL viewed itself as the world leader in providing interactive services, Web brands, Internet technologies, and electronic commerce services. AOL operates two subscription-based Internet services and, at the time of the announcement, had 20 million subscribers plus another 2 million through CompuServe. Strategic Fit (A 1999 Perspective) On the surface, the two companies looked quite different. Time Warner was a media and entertainment content company dealing in movies, music, and magazines, whereas AOL was largely an Internet Service Provider offering access to content and commerce. There was very little overlap between the two businesses. AOL said it was buying access to rich and varied branded content, to a huge potential subscriber base, and to broadband technology to create the world's largest vertically integrated media and entertainment company. At the time, Time Warner cable systems served 20% of the country, giving AOL a more direct path into broadband transmission than it had with its ongoing efforts to gain access to DSL technology and satellite TV. The cable connection would facilitate the introduction of AOL TV, a service introduced in 2000 and designed to deliver access to the Internet through TV transmission. Together, the two companies had relationships with almost 100 million consumers. At the time of the announcement, AOL had 23 million subscribers and Time Warner had 28 million magazine subscribers, 13 million cable subscribers, and 35 million HBO subscribers. The combined companies expected to profit from its huge customer database to assist in the cross promotion of each other's products. Market Confusion Following the Announcement AOL's stock was immediately hammered following the announcement, losing about 19% of its market value in 2 days. Despite a greater than 20% jump in Time Warner's stock during the same period, the market value of the combined companies was actually $10 billion lower 2 days after the announcement than it had been immediately before making the deal public. Investors appeared to be confused about how to value the new company. The two companies' shareholders represented investors with different motivations, risk tolerances, and expectations. AOL shareholders bought their company as a pure play in the Internet, whereas investors in Time Warner were interested in a media company. Before the announcement, AOL's shares traded at 55 times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization have been deducted. Reflecting its much lower growth rate, Time Warner traded at 14 times the same measure of its earnings. Could the new company achieve growth rates comparable to the 70% annual growth that AOL had achieved before the announcement? In contrast, Time Warner had been growing at less than one-third of this rate. Integration Challenges Integrating two vastly different organizations is a daunting task. Internet company AOL tended to make decisions quickly and without a lot of bureaucracy. Media and entertainment giant Time Warner is a collection of separate fiefdoms, from magazine publishing to cable systems, each with its own subculture. During the 1990s, Time Warner executives did not demonstrate a sterling record in achieving their vision of leveraging the complementary elements of their vast empire of media properties. The diverse set of businesses never seemed to reach agreement on how to handle online strategies among the various businesses. Top management of the combined companies included icons such as Steve Case and Robert Pittman of the digital world and Gerald Levin and Ted Turner of the media and entertainment industry. Steve Case, former chair and CEO of AOL, was appointed chair of the new company, and Gerald Levin, former chair and CEO of Time Warner, remained as chair. Under the terms of the agreement, Levin could not be removed until at least 2003, unless at least three-quarters of the new board consisting of eight directors from each company agreed. Ted Turner was appointed as vice chair. The presidents of the two companies, Bob Pittman of AOL and Richard Parsons of Time Warner, were named co-chief operating officers (COOs) of the new company. Managers from AOL were put into many of the top management positions of the new company in order to "shake up" the bureaucratic Time Warner culture. None of the Time Warner division heads were in favor of the merger. They resented having been left out of the initial negotiations and the conspicuous wealth of Pittman and his subordinates. More profoundly, they did not share Levin's and Case's view of the digital future of the combined firms. To align the goals of each Time Warner division with the overarching goals of the new firm, cash bonuses based on the performance of the individual business unit were eliminated and replaced with stock options. The more the Time Warner division heads worked with the AOL managers to develop potential synergies, the less confident they were in the ability of the new company to achieve its financial projections (Munk: 2004, pp. 198-199). The speed with which the merger took place suggested to some insiders that neither party had spent much assessing the implications of the vastly different corporate cultures of the two organizations and the huge egos of key individual managers. Once Steve Case and Jerry Levin reached agreement on purchase price and who would fill key management positions, their subordinates were given one weekend to work out the "details." These included drafting a merger agreement and accompanying documents such as employment agreements, deal termination contracts, breakup fees, share exchange processes, accounting methods, pension plans, press releases, capital structures, charters and bylaws, appraisal rights, etc. Investment bankers for both firms worked feverishly on their respective fairness opinions. While never a science, the opinions had to be sufficiently compelling to convince the boards and the shareholders of the two firms to vote for the merger and to minimize postmerger lawsuits against individual directors. The merger would ultimately generate $180 million in fees for the investment banks hired to support the transaction. (Munk: 2004, pp. 164-166). The Disparity Between Projected and Actual Performance Becomes Apparent Despite all the hype about the emergence of a vertically integrated new media company, AOL seems to be more like a traditional media company, similar to Bertelsmann in Germany, Vivendi in France, and Australia's News Corp. A key part of the AOL Time Warner strategy was to position AOL as the preeminent provider of high-speed access in the world, just as it is in the current online dial-up world. Despite pronouncements to the contrary, AOL Time Warner seems to be backing away from its attempt to become the premier provider of broadband services. The firm has had considerable difficulty in convincing other cable companies, who compete directly with Time Warner Communications, to open up their networks to AOL. Cable companies are concerned that AOL could deliver video over the Internet and steal their core television customers. Moreover, cable companies are competing head-on with AOL's dial-up and high-speed services by offering a tiered pricing system giving subscribers more options than AOL. At $23 billion at the end of 2001, concerns mounted about AOL's leverage. Under a contract signed in March 2000, AOL gave German media giant Bertelsmann, an owner of one-half of AOL Europe, a put option to sell its half of AOL Europe to AOL for $6.75 billion. In early 2002, Bertelsmann gave notice of its intent to exercise the option. AOL had to borrow heavily to meet its obligation and was stuck with all of AOL Europe's losses, which totaled $600 million in 2001. In late April 2002, AOL Time Warner rocked Wall Street with a first quarter loss of $54 billion. Although investors had been expecting bad news, the reported loss simply reinforced anxieties about the firm's ability to even come close to its growth targets set immediately following closing. Rather than growing at a projected double-digit pace, earnings actually declined by more than 6% from the first quarter of 2001. Most of the sub-par performance stemmed from the Internet side of the business. What had been billed as the greatest media company of the twenty-first century appeared to be on the verge of a meltdown! Epilogue The AOL Time Warner story went from a fairy tale to a horror story in less than three years. On January 7, 2000, the merger announcement date, AOL and Time Warner had market values of $165 billion and $76 billion, respectively, for a combined value of $241 billion. By the end of 2004, the combined value of the two firms slumped to about $78 billion, only slightly more than Time Warner's value on the merger announcement date. This dramatic deterioration in value reflected an ill-advised strategy, overpayment, poor integration planning, slow post-merger integration, and the confluence of a series of external events that could not have been predicted when the merger was put together. Who knew when the merger was conceived that the dot-com bubble would burst, that the longest economic boom in U.S. history would fizzle, and that terrorists would attach the World Trade Center towers? While these were largely uncontrollable and unforeseeable events, other factors were within the control of those who engineered the transaction. The architects of the deal were largely incompatible, as were their companies. Early on, Steve Case and Jerry Levin were locked in a power struggle. The companies' cultural differences were apparent early on when their management teams battled over presenting rosy projections to Wall Street. It soon became apparent that the assumptions underlying the financial projections were unrealistic as new online subscribers and advertising revenue stalled. By mid 2002, the nearly $7 billion paid to buy out Bertelsmann's interest in AOL Europe caused the firm's total debt to balloon to $28 billion. The total net loss, including the write down of goodwill, for 2002 reached $100 billion, the largest corporate loss in U.S. history. Furthermore, The Washington Post uncovered accounting improprieties. The strategy of delivering Time Warner's rich array of proprietary content online proved to be much more attractive in concept than in practice. Despite all the talk about culture of cooperation, business at Time Warner was continuing as it always had. Despite numerous cross-divisional meetings in which creative proposals were made, nothing happened (Munk: 2004, p. 219). AOL's limited broadband capability and archaic email and instant messaging systems encouraged erosion in its customer base and converting the wealth of Time Warner content to an electronic format proved to be more daunting than it had appeared. Finally, Both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department investigated AOL Time Warner due to accounting improprieties. The firm admitted having inflated revenue by $190 million during the 21 month period ending in fall of 2000. Scores of lawsuits have been filed against the firm. The resignation of Steve Case in January 2003 marked the restoration of Time Warner as the dominant partner in the merger, but with Richard Parsons at the new CEO. On October 16, 2003 the company was renamed Time Warner. Time Warner seemed appeared to be on the mend. Parson's vowed to simplify the company by divesting non-core businesses, reduce debt, boost sagging morale, and to revitalize AOL. By late 2003, Parsons had reduced debt by more than $6 billion, about $2.6 billion coming from the sale of Warner Music and another $1.2 billion from the sale of its 50% stake in the Comedy Central cable network to the network's other owner, Viacom Music. With their autonomy largely restored, Time Warner's businesses were beginning to generate enviable amounts of cash flow with a resurgence in advertising revenues, but AOL continued to stumble having lost 2.6 million subscribers during 2003. In mid-2004, improving cash flow enabled the Time Warner to acquire Advertising.com for $435 million in cash. Discussion Questions: -What were the primary motives for this transaction? How would you categorize them in terms of the historical motives for mergers and acquisitions discussed in this chapter?