Motives Behind Mergers & Acquisitions : Theory & Critical Review of Literature

In this age of cut-throat competition, every company wants to grow and be ahead of its competitors. There are two ways to achieve growth- first the Greenfield expansions resulting in Organic growth in one's own unit, and second the Brownfield expansions or M&As resulting in Inorganic growth. In a hurry to expand and beat the competitors profitably, the companies are restructuring themselves through M&As.Mergers and Acquisitions (M&As) are the inorganic growth strategies which have become important in today's corporate world due to increase in competition and complexity. This paper is an attempt to discuss major studies undertaken to identify the motives behind mergers and acquisitions. Broadly, literature review has been done on empirical studies in journals, published papers and other useful internet material to explain different aspects such as domestic and cross- border M&As, their causes, trends etc