ABSTRACT
Challenging economic and political changes in the world, such as the elimination of trade barriers and customs distortions, liberalisation of capital movement and investment and privatisation programmes have led towards globalisation. One area that has been impacted upon by globalisation is merger1 and acquisition transactions. There has been fluctuation of merger activities over the years. A bout of ‘merger mania’ is referred to when the level of merger activity is very high;2 for instance, a very high degree of merger activity was in the second half of the 1980s3 and then in the mid1990s,4 followed by another upward movement from 2005 to 2007.5 From 2008 there has been a decline in merger transactions due to the global economic crisis. Nonetheless, a notable feature of mergers in recent years has been their complexity, size and geographical reach.6 Large merger transactions have occurred in many sectors as firms have sought to restructure and consolidate their place in a global market. For instance, in the oil industries, BP merged with Amoco7 in 1998 followed by the Exxon/Mobil,8 BP/Arco9 and TotalFina/Elf 10 mergers.11
