Project Experience

Study the Past to Predict the Future - Useful Techniques in Merger Analysis

Client Situation
As managed care continues to change the rules by which products are selected and valued, our client, like many orthopedic companies in the extremely competitive medical-surgical supply business, faced a complex and confusing marketplace. In an effort to study where its competitors were heading, our client sought brief profiles of the acquisition activity of its major competitors over the past five years.

Fuld Approach
For the seven companies under study, Fuld provided not only the financial details of the transactions, but the main purpose or product of the acquisition and an analysis of the meaning of the acquisition to the competitor's existing business.

Benefits and Implications
Many information providers currently offer 'lists' of M&A or licensing transactions. Until you understand who is involved and what the transaction means to either party's interests, the data are truly just bits and bytes, numbers and statistics. In understanding the small-but-worthy products collected by a seemingly innocuous competitor over this five-year period, and in particular the patents the smaller acquisitions held, our client was able to view the transactions in a new light - not as the random picking up of cast-off products but as a slow but progressive franchise-building strategy that ultimately could have taken our client (and others) unawares.
For more information about merger & acquisition analysis in the healthcare industry, contact either Anthony Nagle at tnagle@fuld.com or Cynthia Gerber Tomlinson at cgtomlinson@fuld.com.