The buzzwords might be the same as in the world of corporate combinations -- "synergy" comes to mind -- but the objectives could not be more different.
Plaintiffs discovered scores of internal e-mails that, the court says, suggest that Credit Suisse First Boston did not believe its rosy research reports on the future of AOL Time Warner, a boom-era merger now widely considered among the worst corporate combinations in history.
That the biggest merger ever was hatched in just ten days should encourage shareholders in Glaxo and SmithKline to look closely at the small print.Admittedly, the benefits of today's corporate combinations are often real, and in some cases impressive.
In the seven-and-a-half years of Clinton, there have been 71,811 corporate combinations valued at $6.66 trillion, more than three times the combinations during the 12 years of Reagan-Bush.
While such corporate combinations can win enormous wealth for executives, they don't always create jobs, and they sometimes even cut them.
For example, in the case of existing corporate taxes, a combination of several influencing factors determines firm value creation through corporate hedging, such as volatility of pre-tax income, convexity of the tax function, and the amount of tax payments.
