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The wave of regulatory reforms in European telecoms and electricity industries has had an important impact on the structure of the state as well as of corporations. The purpose of this paper is to explore the establishment of these regulatory organizations at the state and corporate levels within a unified theoretical framework, that is grounded in the politics of regulation.

The case selection includes governance structures at the state and corporate levels in 16 European countries in both telecoms and electricity.

The data reveal that regulatory agencies exist in both telecoms and electricity sectors in all 16 countries under study, with the notable exception of Switzerland's electricity sector. At the same time, business corporate reforms were also evident, mainly via the creation of corporate regulatory offices at the headquarters of the firms. These departments, which redefine the patterns of responsibility within the corporation and have played the leading role in the negotiations with the external regulatory environment.

This paper strives to overcome the tendency in the scholarly literature to look only at one or the other aspect of the growth of regulatory development and therefore also to offer a narrow understanding of the growth of regulation. It asserts that the commonalities in the expansion of autonomous regulatory agencies and corporate regulatory departments suggest that the growth in the regulatory professionalization of the state and of business corporations reflects the changing nature of capitalist economy and society and the rise of a new global order of “regulatory capitalism”.

This study raises the question of whether the nature of the merger and acquisition (M&A) strategy per se, that is reflected throughout the M&A process, may lead to a potential trade-off between the two main objectives of M&As – synergy success and efficiency gains, which may explain the high failure rate of the M&A strategy. The purpose of this paper is to present a mediation model to explore the potential trade-off that may exist between synergy success and efficiency gains. The model examines whether the change in the workforce size during the M&A process mediates the relationship between the types of M&A and M&A success, resulting in a trade-off.

The study uses a sample of 394 public firms.

The study reveals that if the management over-increases the workforce size to realize the synergy potential, then it heightens the risk of the “win synergy-lose efficiency” trade-off, resulting in an increase in revenue growth but a decrease in profitability. The results even show that international M&As lead to an “over” increase in the workforce size to maximize the synergy potential, but at the same time, an increase in the workforce size harms the efficiency gains, resulting in a decrease in profitability. However, vertical and conglomerate M&As may lead neither to synergy success nor to efficiency gains, which reflects a situation of no benefits from the M&A for the acquirer.

The study emphasizes that one of the main challenges in the implementation of the M&A strategy is to strike a balance between the objective of improving efficiency through cutting costs and workforce reduction during the integration stage and the objective of realizing the synergy potential, despite the workforce reduction during the M&A process.

Due to the high failure rate of the M&A strategy, this paper aims to raise the question of whether the pre-M&A performances could predict integration success in cross-border M&As with the aim of reducing the integration risk. Cross-border M&A is considered an important strategy for gaining access to foreign markets, but at the same time, cross-border M&As involve a high risk for failure, particularly due to the problematic integration stage in cross-border M&As.

The study presents a research model that includes six pre-M&A performances – the revenue and profitability of the acquirer and the target, the revenue ratio and profitability ratio – with the aim of analysing if the pre-M&A performances could predict integration success. The sample of the study includes 68 public firms that were engaged in cross-border M&As from 13 countries. The database of the study is based on 272 annual reports (10-K) of the public companies that are included in the sample.

The results show that the revenue and profitability of the acquirer and the target predict integration success. However, the revenue ratio predicts integration success, but not the profitability ratio. The results also show that a larger target leads to a complicated integration process that ends in a failure of the integration stage, while a larger acquirer could help to facilitate the integration stage. The study also indicates that buying a small target in relation to the acquirer decreases the risks of the integration stage. Moreover, the pre-performances of the acquirer more predict integration success compared to the pre-performances of the target.

The study suggests that buying an inefficient target creates opportunities for removing redundancies, while buying profitable target may hinder the possibilities for eliminating duplicate jobs and operations. This mixed effect highlights the challenges in implementing of M&A strategy in cross-border-M&As.