ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a qualitative assessment of the IRC's activities and importance. It attempts to evaluate the Corporation's work under four headings. The first is the appropriateness or otherwise of the IRC's original objective, which was to promote mergers. The second is the extent to which it was successful in meeting this objective. The third is how far the IRC's role, and its conception of that role, changed over its four-year life? However, in the four years 1967–70 it is estimated that there were about 3400 mergers among industrial and commercial companies. Fourth, it considers what lessons can be learned from the IRC's experience. The chapter turns to a more general consideration of the IRC's involvement in mergers. It examines how the Corporation increasingly saw the limitations of this role and, with the encouragement of the government, began to perform a range of functions for which its unique position between Whitehall, the City and industry made it ideally suited.
