Billings, Mark and Tilba, Anna and Wilson, John (2016) '‘To invite disappointment or worse’ : governance, audit and due diligence in the Ferranti–ISC merger.', Business history., 58 (4). pp. 453-478.
Abstract
Mergers and acquisitions frequently destroy shareholder value, and UK companies have a particularly poor record in US deals. But outcomes are rarely as calamitous as in the case of the British electronics group Ferranti which in 1987 entered into a significant merger with the US company International Signal and Control Group (ISC). The combined group had collapsed by 1993. Our analysis of the case, seen in the light of more recent corporate failures such as the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), leads us to question whether the UK’s ‘idiosyncratic mix’ of corporate governance mechanisms can ever effectively constrain the flawed and dictatorial decision-making of dominant individuals.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Full text: | (AM) Accepted Manuscript Download PDF (791Kb) |
| Status: | Peer-reviewed |
| Publisher Web site: | https://doi.org/10.1080/00076791.2015.1085973 |
| Publisher statement: | This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Business History on 15 Sep 2015, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/00076791.2015.1085973. |
| Date accepted: | 18 August 2015 |
| Date deposited: | 09 July 2018 |
| Date of first online publication: | 15 September 2015 |
| Date first made open access: | No date available |
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