Are outbound mergers truly profitable for the acquirers?

In today's globalized economy, mergers and acquisitions are being increasingly used the world over, for improving competitiveness of companies by gaining greater market share, broadening the portfolio and reduce business risk, for entering new markets and geographies, and capitalizing on economies of scale etc. There has been significant growth in the mergers and acquisition activity in India since 1991. The research in this area however, has been relatively less in the context of Indian industry. The research so far has been on examining specific cases of mergers and returns to shareholders, developing indicators to predict mergers or acquisitions, and the issues of corporate governance in acquisitions. This present research study has aimed to study the impact of outbound mergers on the operating performance of acquiring corporates in Indian industry. The study has examined the pre-merger and post-merger performance of merging firms, by comparison of some key financial ratios. The study has tried to analyze post-merger operating performance for 30 sampled firms from different industries.