Video case study - Rebranding acquisitions

This video clip is a great way of highlighting one way in which a strategy of growth through acquisition can lead to some significant changes in a product portfolio…

A Bigger Competitor for Specsavers

Boots Opticians has announced that it is to merge with Dollond & Aitchison, creating what will be the second largest chain of opticians in the UK.  Assuming that the deal gets the green light from the Competition Commission, then the market leader Specsavers will find itself competing with a much larger Boots Opticians.

Changing the rulebook for competition referrals

The rapid creation of Lloyds HBOS has highlighted the role (or non-role in this case) of the competition regulators in the UK…

Lloyds HBOS is Born - One Extraordinary Day

Days like today come along very rarely in the business world.  A day when events at HBOS moved at astonishing speed and the financial media struggled to keep up with developments.  All, that is, except for one man - Robert Peston

HBOS on the brink of takeover

Robert Peston, who broke the story of Northern Rock, has just announced news of a possible takeover of HBOS by Lloyds TSB as HBOS shares fall significantly again on the Stock Exchange this morning…

Huge losses force Taylor Wimpey into drastic promotional activity

When shareholders approved the £5 billion merger of housebuilders Taylor Woodrow and George Wimpey, they probably didn’t expect that by the end of August 2008, the combined business would be worth less than £500 million.......

Business Strategy - BA plans merger with Iberia

We’ve used British Airways as a rich case study in our A2 Business Strategy workshops for a couple of years.  It looks like there will be plenty of scope to revisit the business in future workshops following today’s announcement…

Holiday giant ventures into the luxury segment

Now that there are just two dominant mainstream package tour operators in the UK, the search for profitable growth is taking businesses like Thomas Cook into more specialist segments.  It has just bought one of the most exclusive luxury operators as part of a renewed acquisition strategy.

Consolidation speculation in the budget hotel market

The budget hotel market in the UK has enjoyed stronger than average growth in the last decade. A small number of operators have steadily built their market share, and now there is media speculation that the two largest competitors will soon merge.

Now thats what i call a takeover

There are small takeovers.  There are big ones.  And then there’s Microsoft’s offer to takeover Yahoo - announced this morning!  The price tag is a cool £22.4bn.  This deal looks like it could be a fantastic case study for business teachers and students, raising all kinds of issues about fair competition, growth strategy, economies of scale and competitive response (what will Google do?).