Анализ Сделок Слияний И Поглощений Российских Металлургических Компаний

Strategic management and especially business cycle theory place emphasis on importance of contracyclical business cycle management practices (BCM), among one of them is M&A policy. According to contrayclical M&A policy companies should acquire enterprises during periods of recessions when prices are low and sell assets (if there is necessity) during boom years because otherwise the M&A policy would not be profitable. In this paper M&A deals of Russian metallurgical companies during recent business cycle (2000 - 2013) are analyzed. Metal industry is traditionally viewed as being under large exposure of business cycle fluctuations due to link to supply elasticity and industrial production. It is shown that actual M&A policy of companies was debt - financed and procyclical rather than contracyclical which was contrary to what was suggested by theory. It is shown that most acquisitions were performed during boom period even close to peak and some sales were done after crisis. It is also shown that although all selected companies pursued similar expansion procyclical policies, some of them experienced threat of financial insolvency. Whether company experienced threat of financial insolvency can be explained not only by the degree of procyclical debt - financed M&A policy, but also by other factors - direction of geographical expansion and corporate governance of a company.[Executive summary in English is available at p. 30]