www.nytimes.com/2004/01/15/business/15react.html
da jetzt auch hier schon wieder über Bankenmerger spekuliert wird,stelle ich mal den interessanten Artikel rein für die Wirtschaftinteressierten,(man wird ohne Registrierung nicht rankommen):
f history is any guide, at least one sure-fire "bet the house and then double-down'' winner will emerge from J. P. Morgan Chase's giant acquisition of Bank One.
That would be Citigroup.
Megamergers like the one announced yesterday have a long and glorious history of failure and troubles. Ask the shareholders of Time Warner and America Online. Or Chrysler and Daimler-Benz. Or Hewlett-Packard and Compaq. Or J. P. Morgan and Chase Manhattan. Or Bank One and First Chicago NBD. Or Wal-Mart and wait.
Wal-Mart does not do big mergers, though it will buy much smaller competitors in so-called tuck-in acquisitions. Southwest Airlines, Microsoft and many of the other truly successful growth companies and stocks of the last generation do not depend on big mergers either. Citigroup is something of an exception, but even it has stopped making really big deals since 1998, when it was created by the merger of Citicorp and Travelers Group.
In general, great companies prefer to grow "organically," as Wall Street likes to say. That is, from the inside out, by finding new markets or by taking market share from their competitors
Which makes growth by mergers inorganic, nonliving growth. Companies buy customers when they cannot win new business on their own. They merge when their executives do not have a better idea of what to do. Those are often the facts missing from the splashy announcements of big deals. They are especially true of mergers between lagging companies.
And J. P. Morgan Chase and Bank One are nothing if not lagging. Over the last five years, their stocks have each fallen about 15 percent, ranking fifth and sixth among the seven largest banks in the United States. That dismal performance is directly related to the fact that J. P. Morgan Chase and Bank One are each the product of a megamerger.
( Wachovia, the only other big bank whose stock has performed worse over that span, is also the product of a series of mergers.)
In 2000, Chase Manhattan bought J. P. Morgan for more than $30 billion in stock, a deal intended to make Chase a leader in investment banking. The deal came just after Wall Street had peaked, and opened Chase to expensive lawsuits related to J. P. Morgan's conduct during the boom. Profits at Chase, which renamed itself J. P. Morgan Chase, immediately plunged, from $3.46 a share in 1999, to $1.67 a share in 2002.
Now, J. P. Morgan Chase has finally begun to recover from that ill-timed purchase, said Steven Wharton, a bank analyst at Loomis Sayles & Company who owns J. P. Morgan Chase shares. For all of 2003, its per-share profits are expected to be $3.12, according to analysts' estimates. Mr. Wharton said he did not understand why J. P. Morgan Chase was so eager to join with Bank One, whose strength is in credit cards and other products for consumers, at a time when the investment banking business is finally recovering.
"If J. P. Morgan had such leverage coming into the economic recovery, why dilute it now?" Mr. Wharton asked.
At Bank One, under James L. Dimon, who became its chairman in 2000, the company has begun to slough off the hangover from its ugly 1998 merger with First Chicago NBD. After its profits fell from $3.45 a share in 1999 to $2.77 in 2002, they are expected to rise to $3.05 this year.
Must be time for another deal. But the reasons that mergers, especially bank mergers, do not work are legion.
Information technology departments must spend enormous amounts of time and money worrying about integrating big computer systems with billions of pieces of customer data. Managers must spend big amounts of time and money worrying about integrating themselves with new bosses. In its announcement of the deal yesterday, J. P. Morgan Chase and Bank One estimated that their merger would cost $3 billion to complete. The companies expect to save $2.2 billion over three years, in part by cutting 10,000 jobs.
Making matters worse, it is nearly impossible for outsiders to determine whether a deal is working. Writing on his site bankstocks.com about potential problems with mergers, Thomas K. Brown said: "The combined entity has no extended operating history, outsiders can't definitively identify inflated expenses here or a revenue shortfall there. They have to take management's word."
And managements generally do not like admitting problems until they become too big to hide.
Citigroup, meanwhile, continues to steam along, taking business from its distracted competitors. Since 1999, its profits have risen from $2.22 a share to $3.41, and its stock price has doubled.
da jetzt auch hier schon wieder über Bankenmerger spekuliert wird,stelle ich mal den interessanten Artikel rein für die Wirtschaftinteressierten,(man wird ohne Registrierung nicht rankommen):
f history is any guide, at least one sure-fire "bet the house and then double-down'' winner will emerge from J. P. Morgan Chase's giant acquisition of Bank One.
That would be Citigroup.
Megamergers like the one announced yesterday have a long and glorious history of failure and troubles. Ask the shareholders of Time Warner and America Online. Or Chrysler and Daimler-Benz. Or Hewlett-Packard and Compaq. Or J. P. Morgan and Chase Manhattan. Or Bank One and First Chicago NBD. Or Wal-Mart and wait.
Wal-Mart does not do big mergers, though it will buy much smaller competitors in so-called tuck-in acquisitions. Southwest Airlines, Microsoft and many of the other truly successful growth companies and stocks of the last generation do not depend on big mergers either. Citigroup is something of an exception, but even it has stopped making really big deals since 1998, when it was created by the merger of Citicorp and Travelers Group.
In general, great companies prefer to grow "organically," as Wall Street likes to say. That is, from the inside out, by finding new markets or by taking market share from their competitors
Which makes growth by mergers inorganic, nonliving growth. Companies buy customers when they cannot win new business on their own. They merge when their executives do not have a better idea of what to do. Those are often the facts missing from the splashy announcements of big deals. They are especially true of mergers between lagging companies.
And J. P. Morgan Chase and Bank One are nothing if not lagging. Over the last five years, their stocks have each fallen about 15 percent, ranking fifth and sixth among the seven largest banks in the United States. That dismal performance is directly related to the fact that J. P. Morgan Chase and Bank One are each the product of a megamerger.
( Wachovia, the only other big bank whose stock has performed worse over that span, is also the product of a series of mergers.)
In 2000, Chase Manhattan bought J. P. Morgan for more than $30 billion in stock, a deal intended to make Chase a leader in investment banking. The deal came just after Wall Street had peaked, and opened Chase to expensive lawsuits related to J. P. Morgan's conduct during the boom. Profits at Chase, which renamed itself J. P. Morgan Chase, immediately plunged, from $3.46 a share in 1999, to $1.67 a share in 2002.
Now, J. P. Morgan Chase has finally begun to recover from that ill-timed purchase, said Steven Wharton, a bank analyst at Loomis Sayles & Company who owns J. P. Morgan Chase shares. For all of 2003, its per-share profits are expected to be $3.12, according to analysts' estimates. Mr. Wharton said he did not understand why J. P. Morgan Chase was so eager to join with Bank One, whose strength is in credit cards and other products for consumers, at a time when the investment banking business is finally recovering.
"If J. P. Morgan had such leverage coming into the economic recovery, why dilute it now?" Mr. Wharton asked.
At Bank One, under James L. Dimon, who became its chairman in 2000, the company has begun to slough off the hangover from its ugly 1998 merger with First Chicago NBD. After its profits fell from $3.45 a share in 1999 to $2.77 in 2002, they are expected to rise to $3.05 this year.
Must be time for another deal. But the reasons that mergers, especially bank mergers, do not work are legion.
Information technology departments must spend enormous amounts of time and money worrying about integrating big computer systems with billions of pieces of customer data. Managers must spend big amounts of time and money worrying about integrating themselves with new bosses. In its announcement of the deal yesterday, J. P. Morgan Chase and Bank One estimated that their merger would cost $3 billion to complete. The companies expect to save $2.2 billion over three years, in part by cutting 10,000 jobs.
Making matters worse, it is nearly impossible for outsiders to determine whether a deal is working. Writing on his site bankstocks.com about potential problems with mergers, Thomas K. Brown said: "The combined entity has no extended operating history, outsiders can't definitively identify inflated expenses here or a revenue shortfall there. They have to take management's word."
And managements generally do not like admitting problems until they become too big to hide.
Citigroup, meanwhile, continues to steam along, taking business from its distracted competitors. Since 1999, its profits have risen from $2.22 a share to $3.41, and its stock price has doubled.
