engleski

Non-financial Issues of Mergers and Acquisitions: Cases from Croatian Banking Sector

Globalization of the economy is one of the main driving forces fuelling changes in the strategy formulation and management process in the organizations regardless of their size and sector. In the attempt to consolidate market position or to enhance value creation process for their customer, companies from manufacturing, retailing, food, services, oil and other areas, challenged by the increased competition deriving from liberalization of national economies and a need to conquer new markets apply new business strategies characterized by building networks of relationships or forming strategic partnerships and alliances with others. However, one of the most popular choices in a range of business growth strategies, in last two decades, became a full integration of companies through mergers and acquisitions. Financial sector, with banking as its most important part has been strongly influenced by changes in competitive framework in Croatia. International banks, as a part of their strategies of increasing regional or global presence acquired control stock packages in a great number of local Croatian banks. In addition, number of the mid-sized or small Croatian banks wanted to consolidate their market position by integration of their business and have done it though mergers. Such changes were of the highest importance for participating bank mangers, their employees and clients, and therefore required well-prepared and thoughtful program of change management. As the wealth of empirical and theoretical data indicate, many mistakes in change management process can be linked directly to, and have causal connections with, breakdowns in communications. Such breakdowns in a great number of cases led to the failure of the entire endeavor. Therefore, great attention is to be given to best practice in corporate communications directed toward different groups of stakeholders including company's shareholders, legal authorities, own employees, clients, media and others. Well conceived and implemented communication program increases the chance of a successful merger/acquisition and that is where marketing comes to the play, offering its rich instrumentation of the segmentation, research and communication means.

mergers; acquisitions; Croatia; banking sector

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