UB School of Management professor publishes new book on pitfalls of mergers and acquisitions

By Alexandra Richter

BUFFALO, N.Y. — A staggering 70-75% of merger and acquisition deals fail to meet expectations, yet new deals continue to dominate businesses, causing corporate setbacks, employee layoffs and losses to investors, according to new research from the University at Buffalo School of Management.

Feng Gu, chair and professor of accounting and law in the UB School of Management, seeks to reveal the major drivers of acquisitions’ success and failure in his new book The M&A Failure Trap: Why Most Mergers and Acquisitions Fail and How the Few Succeed (November 2024, Wiley).

“Our goal is to provide top-level management and investors with a blueprint to avoid the missteps that have led companies astray and align strategies to achieve sustainable long-term growth,” says Gu, who co-authored the book.

The authors compiled more than 60 years of research in corporate economics as well as original research of over 40,000 acquisitions spanning more than 40 years to learn how executives and directors of corporations can ensure that an acquisition deal will be successful for stakeholders, investors and employees long-term.

To help executives and directors put research into action, Feng and his co-author developed a 43-variable Acquisition Success Model, condensed into an easy-to-use 10-factor scorecard that they can use to predict the likelihood of a prospective merger success.

“Feng’s book is a first-rate example of how our faculty are advancing impactful research to address the challenges facing today’s business leaders,” says Ananth Iyer, dean of the UB School of Management.

Gu is also the co-author of The End of Accounting and The Path Forward for Investors and Managers (June 2016, Wiley) which is widely circulated (it is in five languages) and was included on the Forbes’ 2020 CFO Essential Reading List and was cited by more than 200 professional organizations and media outlets.

Gu collaborated on both books with Baruch Lev, Philip Bardes Professor Emeritus of Accounting and Finance at the New York University Stern School of Business.