Business Economics - hard hats on for banana wars

We are taking business growth as our first topic for unit 3 this term, and the FT has some excellent resources to introduce the subject, in th form of short Lex video discussions. The three that I have used look at Fyffes attempt to buy Chiquita, which has been 'gatecrashed' by two Brazilian firms, Carillion's bid to buy the much bigger Balfour Beatty, and then to cover demergers, Barclays' sale of their Spanish business.

We have watched the first two of these, answering questions on a worksheet which I have attached below. After discussing these, the students were able to draw up an impressive list of motives for business growth, the factors that make a takeover target particularly attractive or vulnerable, and the potential pitfalls which might befall an attempt at external growth. After covering the textbook theory for these next week, we will look at the Barclays story - worksheet below. Each of the worksheets has a link to the relevant video.

Worksheet_FT_takeover_and_merger_videos_and_questions_-_Chiquita-Fyffes_and_Carillion-Balfour_Beatty.pdf

Worksheet_FT_Barclays_retrenches.pdf