Eccles R G, Lanes K L, Wilson T C
Advisory Capital Partners, Jupiter, FL, USA.
Harv Bus Rev. 1999 Jul-Aug;77(4):136-46, 186.
Despite 30 years of evidence demonstrating that most acquisitions don't create value for the acquiring company, executives continue to make more deals, and bigger deals, every year. There are plenty of reasons why value isn't created, but many times it's simply because the acquiring company paid too much. It's not, however, that acquirers pay too high a price in an absolute sense. Rather, they pay more than the acquisition is worth to them. What is that optimum price? The authors present a systematic way to arrive at it, involving several distinct concepts of value. In today's market, the purchase price of an acquisition will nearly always be higher than the intrinsic value of the company--the price of its stock before any acquisition intentions are announced. The key is to determine how much of that difference is "synergy value"--the value that will result from improvements made when the companies are combined. This value will accrue to the acquirer's shareholders rather than to the target's shareholders. The more synergy value a particular acquisition can generate, the higher the maximum price an acquirer is justified in paying. Just as important as correctly calculating the synergy value is having the discipline to walk away from a deal when the numbers don't add up. If returns to shareholders from acquisitions are no better in the next ten years than they've been in the past 30, the authors warn, it will be because companies have failed to create systematic corporate governance processes that put their simple lessons into practice.
尽管30年的证据表明，大多数收购并未为收购公司创造价值，但高管们仍在每年进行更多、规模更大的交易。价值未被创造的原因有很多，但很多时候仅仅是因为收购公司出价过高。然而，这并不是说收购方在绝对意义上支付了过高的价格。相反，他们支付的价格超过了收购对他们的价值。那个最优价格是多少呢？作者提出了一种系统的方法来得出这个价格，其中涉及几个不同的价值概念。在当今市场上，收购的购买价格几乎总是高于公司的内在价值——在宣布任何收购意图之前其股票的价格。关键是要确定这种差异中有多少是“协同价值”——即公司合并后通过改进所产生的价值。这种价值将归收购方的股东而非目标公司的股东所有。一项特定收购能够产生的协同价值越高，收购方有理由支付的最高价格就越高。与正确计算协同价值同样重要的是，当数字加起来不合理时要有放弃交易的自律。作者警告说，如果未来十年收购给股东带来的回报并不比过去30年更好，那将是因为公司未能建立起将这些简单经验付诸实践的系统的公司治理流程。
