Banking, oil industry, retail, telecommunications are just a few areas of intense activity. When Wells Fargo and First Interstate Bank merged in 1996 there were major problems. Wells Fargo tried imposing its virtual banking culture and failed, with the drive to electronic banking at shopping centres and Internet access. As a result records were lost, ATMs were slow, and tens of thousands of account holders defected to competitors. The weakened Wells Fargo then quickly fell into a takeover by Norwest of Minneapolis.
Mergers raise many complex issues.
Merging often fails because managers see organisations as structures instead of tribes. For more on this see Futurewise . New mergers, joint ventures and acquisitions in Europe are reviewed by the European Commission which has a month to approve them or start a four month investigation. Here is a list for the first part of November alone to give an indication of the volume of proposals.