ABSTRACT
Mergers and acquisitions have been a strategy in the automobile industry since its earliest days. Growing technological complexity and ever-shortening product life-cycles have long forced automobile producers to enter various kinds of alliances and production networks. During the 1990s and thereafter, limited organic growth potential and industry overcapacity of more than 25 percent worldwide (KPMG 2010) led many car companies to believe that mergers and acquisitions were the only option for realizing their growth targets. During the last decade increased competition among automobile producers has put greater pressure on prices and favoured consumer demand for a wider variety of car models (MacNeill and Chanaron 2005; Orsato and Wells 2007). As a consequence, profit margins for many vehicle manufacturers have dropped, and economies of scale and reaching high plant utilization have become even more crucial in the new millennium.
