Study Of The Effect Of Intangible Assets In Corporate Mergers And Acquisitions

With rapid progress of science and technology and market competition sharpening, Intangible Assets (IA) is becoming more and more important in corporate management and development. IA operation has become the core of corporate capital operation and an important micro-mechanism for disposition of economic resources. In corporate mergers and acquisitions (M&A), paying much weight on nurturing and exercising corporate IA advantages can drastically improve M&A performance and put forward corporate development. This paper focuses on analysing transference of IA advantages across companies in M&A.The paper consists of seven chapters. The first chapter aims to establish a theretical foundation about IA for other parts of the paper, including lA's essence, definition and elements. This chapter pointed out that, the essence of IA is knowledge, skill and ability, its component elements can be divided into four parts: market assets, human capital, intellectual property assets and infrastructure assets, corporate advantage depends more and more on IA advantages.The second chapter focuses on theretical analysis of corporate M&A behavior. In this chapter, I established a theretical analysis framework, which is based on transference of competitive advantages. In this analysis framework, competitive advantages, mainly originating from IA advantages, is regarded as the foundation of M&A, the basic intention of M&A is to realize transference of competitive advantages, With the transference of IA advantages in M&A, four key typys of effectiveness of IA help improve M&A performance.The third chapter is about the effectiveness of brand expansion. In this chapter, I analysed the influence of brand expansion on the mergered company, this effectiveness is determined by brand's advantage, mergered company's ability in sustaining a famous brand and the degree of relationship between two sides' business.The fourth chapter is about the effectiveness of human capital synergy. With the transference of human capital advantages in M&A, the efficiency of disposition of human resources can be much improved, the great potential of human capital is likely to be fully utilized. It is crucial for M&B' fate to integrate human resources, according to characteristicsof human capital.The fifth chapter aims to analyze the effectiveness of technical spread. In this chapter, I suggest that corporate merger and acquisition is becoming an important way to realize advanced technology's spread. With the transference of the parent company's technical advantages in M&A, the ability of technology and efficiency of the acquired side could be greatly improved. Whether Core technology is related, becomes an important requirement for the selection of target company.The sixth chapter is about the effectiveness of cultural synergy. The decision-makers often pay much attention to finance and business to the neglect of cultural "fit" between companies. This problem must cause M&A to a failure. Cultural integration is an important part in postmerger integration. This is because culture has deep and long-term influence on corporate operation. Cultural integration has five typical models, every model has its different degree of difficulty.The final chapter is the summing-up of previous chapters, also the last part of the paper. In this chapter, I expected to put forward some suggestions or methods to improve corporate M&A performence. To realize this goal, firms should enforce to nurture their IA advantages, and utilize their advantages. In additional, firms should pay more attention to postmerger integration, especially cultural integration.