Ah, I see you haven’t been to or forgot the lessons of MBA school. Most acquisitions of big businesses SUBTRACT value from the combined organizations, 67% of the time I’ve been told. A widely studied fact.

So why would a big business ever attempt such prone-to-failure actions over and over again you ask yourself after MBA school. And the reality became clear to me after working for a large corporation that did exactly these things: it’s a fancy form of money laundering. Not the illegal kind, the grab-more-money-from-dopes-in-gov’t kind. 

You see, first the acquisition happens, and big biz takes a small stock price hit for 3-6mths and CEO has to talk up how good it will be long-term. Annual SEC filings show big biz made more money this past year (aka - put all of profitable biz’s profits on the neg. profits of big biz so net positive). A few years go by, and look at that, more power given by gov’t to bigger biz to do more stuff (by way of money printing and inflation and bonds) all while hemorrhaging more cash. But, CEO and top execs kept getting bonuses and prepping for their next “profitable” acquisition (read: stealing littler guy’s profits), rinse, repeat. Let the worker bees figure out how to manipulate “the numbers.”

And no, that’s not being cynical, that’s what I’ve been asked to do as a worker bee on at least two occasions. 

 P.S. I refused both times, and was persona non grata after each time. Couldn’t fire me, but definitely no promotions in my future.