Reference no: EM133530080 , Length: word count:2500

Strategic Management

Assessment: Corporate-level Strategy Instructions

Purpose

The purpose of this assessment is to evaluate and critically analyse the motivations behind and determinants of performance enhancement of cross-border mergers and acquisitions (cross-border M&As) in developed markets initiated by firms from emerging markets.

You will find an emerging market firm (of your choice) from any developing country that has acquired or merged with a firm from a developed country within the past 10 years. Through this assessment, you will demonstrate your acumen with the importance and correct execution of corporate-level strategies.

In most people's career lifespan, the firm you will be working for will either become a target for an M&A, or will be attracted to form an M&A with another company, or your company will already be the byproduct of a larger conglomerate/group of businesses that has gone through M&A(s). The purpose of this assessment is to get you familiar with this strategy and teach you to appreciate the opportunities and costs that come with M&As and, as professionals, to be ready to explore this strategy option for further growing your firm and its product/service portfolios.

Assessment criteria

This assessment will measure your ability to:

Discuss and evaluate the reasons (motivations) for cross-border M&A of emerging market firms.

Assess the success (or not) of the M&A in terms of creating long-term value (e.g. profitability, new market penetration, diversification) for the emerging market firm.

Discuss and appraise the difficulties/problems the firms face(d) before, during and post-M&A.

Write in an academic and professional manner, using APA7 style.

Task details

You will evaluate and critically analyse the motivations behind and determinants of performance enhancement of cross-border mergers and acquisitions (cross-border M&As) in developed markets initiated by firms from emerging markets. Using the learnings from Modules 3 and 4, you will thoroughly delve into a discussion of M&As as a corporate-level strategy used by emerging market firms to enhance their performance and long-term value.

You will also critically assess when such corporate-level strategies do not work and explain the reasons behind poor-performance M&As, identifying strategies that can assist firms to overcome such obstacles.

You can choose any firm (it can also be the firm you currently work for) from a developing country that has in the recent past (10-15 years) merged or acquired (or both) a firm from a developed country. The firm has to be from the electronics/ICT/semiconductor industry.

Instruction

Your report-style assignment should be written in English with structured sentences that conform to academic writing principles and guidelines, with particular attention to correct and thorough referencing of literature and other sources throughout.

The report should be approximately 2,500-3,000 words.

Please note: Assessments which go over the word limit will, in fairness to other students, be penalised between 5% and 100% of the available marks depending on severity. The word limit penalty is 5% of the available marks for every 10% by which the word limit for each assessment is exceeded.

The vast majority of your references must come from high-quality academic journals ranked 3/4/4* on the CABS journal ranking list.
You can structure your report in the following format:

Introduction

Introduce your assignment's aim and importance and how you will structure your report. By reading your introduction, the reader should be able to get a very good (but brief) understanding of what you will be discussing, how it is structured and a couple of key messages that you want to convey to the reader.

Discuss and evaluate the reasons (motivations) for cross-border M&A of emerging market firms

Introduce the company of your choice and the setting for the M&A. Discuss and evaluate the reasons your chosen firm proceeded to this M&A, focusing on aspects of corporate-level strategy.

Assess the success (or not) of the M&A in terms of creating long-term value (profitability, new market penetration, diversification etc.) for the emerging market firm

Was the M&A successful? How do you measure success for the emerging market firm?

What kind of value did it bring that the firm was lacking before the M&A?

What would have been the alternative option for the firm to increase its performance/value if it couldn't proceed with an M&A?

Discuss and appraise the difficulties/problems the firms face(d) before, during and post-M&A

Thoroughly present any difficulties and problems the firms faced before and during M&A, and any they might potentially face post-M&A.

What could have been done differently to reduce or even eliminate some of the potential problems of this M&A?

Present the problems from both sides (i.e. for both companies involved in this M&A).

References

Use APA7 referencing style in text and in the list of references. For more information, see the Academic Referencing Tool.