IMPACT OF INDUSTRY STRUCTURE ON SUCCESS OF MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS

Mergers and acquisitions represent a prominent phenomenon of the developed capitalist world. Growth of the company through mergers and acquisitions provides access to new markets and resources, and the success or failure is of great importance not only for the companies involved in these transactions, but also for all subjects as well as for the overall economy. Given the fact that the results of a large number of studies suggest that the failure rate of mergers and acquisitions is high, the main objective of this paper is to analyse the impact of industry structure on the success of mergers and acquisitions. The empirical research was conducted on the sample of Croatian companies from non-financial sector that were taken over in the period from 1998 to 2006. The following hypothesis was tested and confirmed: the lower the concentration ratio of the target company's industry, the more successful is the target company's performance after the takeover.