Applicability of Mergers and Acquisitions Effectiveness Evaluating Methods Depending on the Industry

This work investigates the existence of the positive merger result dependence on the method of its assessment at the initial stage for companies in different industries. Particular interest in this issue has arisen due to the fact that such a growth strategy involves certain types of risks: large financial and time costs. The outcome of an M&A transaction is often difficult to predict unambiguously, since there are a huge number of internal and external factors that can affect it. The paper considers the theoretical aspects of mergers and acquisitions: basic concepts; the reasons why companies decide to initiate the merger process; overview of the Russian M&A market. This paper contains a review of the features of existing systems for assessing the effectiveness of mergers and acquisitions and a comparative analysis of assessing M&A effectiveness methods, highlighting the features and problems of application. As a result of the study, it was revealed that the most universal method for preliminary assessment of the integration effect is the method of discounting cash flows, but it is quite laborious. The method of evaluating anomalous returns is less costly (time and recourses) and has relatively similar evaluation results. Evaluation by the efficiency frontier constructing method was not applicable. No industry dependence was identified.