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International Acquisitions: The Key to Success in the Experience of Italian Companies

Cross-border acquisitions often imply post-merger integration problems and cultural clashes. Despite the general acceptance of this concern, the literature is more interested in the wealth effect for the shareholders than in understanding the ways to improve post-merger performance. In this paper a model of post-merger integration is proposed and applied to a sample of cross-border acquisitions involving Italian companies. The research pinpointed the factors that have had the greatest impact on performance: - an advance planning and the need to select a target company partly with an eye to the post-merger phase; - the creation of a post-merger team involving one or more managers of the target company. Besides, it has been demonstrated that the decision to change personnel produces extremely negative results. Lastly, the research indicates that a target restructuring strategy provide better results when a top-down approach is applied, while a bottom-up approach is better suited to integration strategies.

Tra le tante incertezze la conferma che small is better.

The term developmental evaluation was coined by Michael Quinn Patton in the mid-1990s to describe the role of evaluators in the development of an innovative initiative. Core evaluation skills, such as articulating the initiative’s theory of change, asking evaluative questions, and providing timely information on emerging results, help the initiative to develop through iterative cycles of learning and adaptation. A growing number of case studies provide valuable insights into the specific situations where developmental evaluation may be useful, the roles and skills required of the evaluator, and the challenges this approach brings. This article provides a concise summary of the insights from theory and case studies to help programme developers and evaluators decide whether and how to use developmental evaluation.

Gli accordi di ristrutturazione dei debiti ex art. 182-bis della legge fallimentare. Un'analisi empirica

EnglishIn 2014 the financial crisis led in Italy around 4700 companies to file for preventive arrangements and debt restructuring agreements. An analysis on filing under 182-bis of Italian Insolvency Law shows that structured companies with large debt exposure and a significant number of banks involved in the restructuring process have a higher probability of success. From the borrower’s standpoint, debt restructuring is accompanied, in the most successful cases, by changes of internal organization, cost reduction, and focus on core business, although, on average, borrowers exit restructurings with high leverage. italianoTra gli strumenti di gestione delle crisi, gli accordi di ristrutturazione dei debiti hanno assunto negli ultimi anni sempre maggiore rilevanza. Un’analisi sui principali tribunali del Nord Italia tra il 2005 e il 2014 mostra che gli accordi appaiono funzionare nel caso di societa strutturate, con elevata esposizione debitoria e in presenza di un numero significativo di banche coinvolte. Dal punto di vista del debitore le ristrutturazioni di successo sono accompagnate da parziali modifiche nell’organizzazione, interventi di riduzione dei costi e una focalizzazione sull’attivita principale, sebbene, in media, i debitori escano dalle ristrutturazioni con una leva elevata.