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Foster Business Library


Mergers & Acquisitions Resources



Foster Business Library research guides are aimed at University of Washington students, faculty, and staff, highlighting resources available to them; users not currently affiliated with the university may be unable to access some of these resources.
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Foster Business Library Databases:

The Foster Business Library offers an extensive collection of over fifty databases on its homepage; see under Databases. For a complete list of Foster databases, see the List of All Business Databases. Access to these databases from off campus requires that you first go to the Off-Campus Access button, in the upper right of all library webpages. These resources may not be accessed from off campus except by those with a valid UW Net ID and password. For more information on Foster business databases, click Databases, A-Z. For information on which Foster business databases to use, see the Database Index. For information on accessing Foster databases from off campus, see Database Access. For guidelines on responsible database usage, see Database Usage.

  • Bloomberg:   Bloomberg is an online database available only on a dedicated Bloomberg workstation, providing 24-hour current and historical financial quotes, commodity market and economic statistics, business newswires, and descriptive information, research and statistics on over 52,000 companies worldwide. In the Foster Business Library, the Bloomberg workstation is located in the Electronic Reference Area on Public PC #20; it may be identified by the red card on top of the monitor. Use of this workstation is limited to current University of Washington students, faculty and staff. A 17-page guide to using Bloomberg is available, adjacent to the workstation, in a black binder with Bloomberg on the spine. For more about Bloomberg, click here.

    For news, descriptions, and statistics on mergers and acquisitions deals, key in MA and GO.

  • Conference Board Business Knowledge Research:   On the Foster Business Library homepage, under List of All Business Databases, at the bottom of the list of Business Databases. This searchable database of full-text research reports, published by the Conference Board, is focused on major issues in business and economics. For a 37-page PDF cumulative index to this database, click here.

    See their ten reports on the topic of Mergers & Acquisitions.

  • Gale Virtual Reference Library:   On the Foster Business Library homepage, under Business Research Tools; go to Encyclopedia of Business and Finance, for access to the much wider Gale Virtual Reference Library, including the Encyclopedia of Small Business, which includes the article below.

    See Mergers and Acquisitions.

  • Hoovers Online:   Under Business Databases on the Foster Business Library homepage. Hoovers Online offers information for more than 40,000 public and private companies worldwide, with links to company homepages and annual reports, charts, company capsule, competitors, divisions, earnings, financials, Fortune and Forbes rankings, history, industry information, insider trading, mission statements, news links, press releases, officers, patents, products, SEC filings, splits, subsidiaries, etc.

    Hoovers Online is a good source for information about companies in the merger and acquisition process.

  • Investext:   On the Foster Business Library homepage, listed under Business Databases; also listed under Company and Industry. Investext contains indexing and the full text of company and industry research reports prepared by several hundred Wall Street, regional and international brokerage and financial firms. Over 11,000 companies are included in this database as well as over fifty industries. All reports are in PDF format.

    A keyword search for Merger in this database produced over 24,000 analysts reports.

  • JSTOR:   This database may be found under Electronic Journals, which may be found by going to Reference Tools in the left menu, under Find It. JSTOR is a subject searchable index of 360 journals, with full-text backfiles of scholarly journals, some of which date back to the 1800's. Among the collections of scholarly journals on this site are ones for Business and for Economics, encompassing over seventy journals.

    A search for Mergers & Acquisitions produced a list of over 4,700 articles.

  • Lexis-Nexis Academic:   To find company information, go to Business and then to Company Financial where you can obtain financial and other data for companies. Information is available from twenty different sources (each of which must be searched separately). SEC filings, particularly company 10K annual reports, are a particularly rich source of company as well as industry information. Use your browser's Find command (or Control-F) to locate references to particular terms of interest in 10K filings such as trends, strategy, competitors, industry, etc.

    Go to Business, then to SEC Filings, to find companies' filings, including 8-K and proxy statements.

  • Mergent Online:   On the Foster Business Library homepage, listed under Business Databases.   Online access to the print edition of the Mergent Manuals, with extensive information on 11,000 U.S. and 17,000 international companies, including financials, stock, properties, joint ventures, annual reports, subsidiaries, S.E.C. filings, etc. For search tips, see About Mergent Online.

    For public companies, see History for a summary of a company's acquisitions and mergers; as an example, see this history for Time Warner.

  • Standard & Poor's NetAdvantage:   On the Foster Business Library homepage, listed under Databases. Full text for the following S&P publications:   Bond Guide; Corporation Records; Dividend Record; Earnings Guide; Industry Surveys; Mutual Fund Reports; The Outlook; Register of Corporations, Directors and Executives; Security Dealers of North America; Stock Guide; and Stock Reports.

    See their Takeover Talk section.

  • Social Sciences Citation Index:   Included in the folder Articles--Citations & Abstracts Under Business Databases on the Foster Business Library homepage. This database "is a multidisciplinary index, with searchable author abstracts, covering the journal literature of the social sciences. It indexes more than 1,725 journals spanning 50 disciplines, as well as covering individually selected, relevant items from over 3,300 of the world's leading scientific and technical journals. It "provides access to current information and retrospective data from 1956 forward."

    A search in this database for Mergers & Acquisitions produced over fifty references.

    Web Resources:

    Unlike library databases, Web resources are available wherever you have web access; they do not require that you access them via the Off-Campus Access button, in the upper right of all library webpages. When using web resources, be sure to evaluate the credibility of these resources. For a subject index to web resources, see Business Resources on the Web on the Foster Business Library homepage.

  • American Institute of Certified Public Accountants:   This organization, founded in 1887, is an information source for all accounting matters and issues. A search of this site for Mergers & Acquisitions produced over two hundred results, including Adventures in Mergers/Acquisitions & Joint Ventures and Differences Between Mergers and Acquisitions. For copies of the institute's publications in the Foster Business Library Reference Accounting Collection, click here.

  • DealBook: Mergers & Acquisitions:   A major part of this New York Times Business blog, by Andrew Ross Sorkin, provides headlines, news, commentary, and reader comments on mergers and acquisitions.

  • Institute of Mergers, Acquisitions and Alliances:   This organization describes itself as "committed to excellence and innovation in education and research to advance knowledge on mergers, acquisitions (M&A) and alliances. MANDA is headquartered at the Webster University, Campus Vienna/Austria. Webster University is an American university with more than 20.000 students and an international network of over 100 campuses in 8 countries." See their Links.

  • M&A Databank:   CNN Money provides a listing of the most recent deals on this website, arranged with the most recent at the top, with target and acquiror names and the dollar value of the deal, with a link to a report on each deal. See also their related Top 25 Deals year-to-date list, arranged by the dollar value of the deal. Coverage is worldwide for these lists.

  • Merger & Acquisitions Dictionary:   This InvestorsEdge.Com dictionary entry covers terms used in mergers and acquisitions, from Absorbed through Poison Pill to Zombie.

  • Mergers & Acquisitions (Wikipedia):   This free online user-created and maintained encyclopedia, Wikipedia, can be a good starting point for a brief orientation to a topic. This entry covers financing a merger or acquisition, motives behind this activity, levels and flows, types of mergers, major mergers and acquisitions since 1990, and more.

  • Mergers and Acquisitions Announced:   This site, from the Online Investor, provides weekly compilations of merger and acquisition announcements.

  • U.S. Mergers & Acquisitions Calendar:   Yahoo! Finance provides monthly compilations of U.S. merger and acquisition announcements, with execution dates, acquiring and target companies, and brief information on terms.

  • U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission:   The primary mission of this organization "is to protect investors and maintain the integrity of the securities markets. The SEC requires public companies to disclose meaningful financial and other information to the public, which provides a common pool of knowledge for all investors to use to judge for themselves if a company's securities are a good investment. The SEC also oversees other key participants in the securities world, including stock exchanges, broker-dealers, investment advisors, mutual funds, and public utility holding companies." See their brief information on Mergers. A site search for this topic produced over 1,500 documents. It is also possible at this site to search Edgar, by company name, for S.E.C. filings related to mergers, such as forms S-4, 14D9,14D6, and 8-K, from 1993 to present.

    Foster Business Library Reference Collection:

    The Foster Business Library Reference Collection consists of business handbooks, encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other quick reference tools. It is located behind the Reference Desk in Foster, arranged by call number. Reference materials cannot be checked out; they may only be used in the library.

  • Routledge dictionary of economics.
    Standard dictionary of economics terms.
    Foster Business Library Reference, CALL NUMBER: HB61 .R92 2002.

    See Merger on pages 359 to 360.

  • Principles of economics.
    Third edition of a standard college textbook, by Mankiw.
    Foster Business Library Reference, CALL NUMBER: HB171.5 .M264 2005.

    See Mergers on pages 329 to 330.

  • Economics.
    Eighteenth edition of the standard college textbook, by Samuelson and Nordhaus.
    Foster Business Library Reference, CALL NUMBER: HB171.5 .S25 2005.

    See Mergers on pages 353 to 354 and 356 to 359.

  • Great events from history II: business and commerce series.
    This five-volume chronological encyclopedia is devoted to the history of business and economic events of the twentieth century worlwide, starting with the first publication of the Dow Jones Industrial Average in 1897 and continuing up to the effective date of NAFTA in 1994. This set includes indexes by chronology, an alphabetic list of events, a subject-keyword index, a category index, a geographic index, and an index by person.
    Foster Business Library Reference, CALL NUMBER: HC55 .G68 1994.

    See volume three, category index page XCVIII, for Mergers and Acquisitions for twelve references to essays on specific transactions.

  • Gale encyclopedia of U.S. economic history.
    This two-volume encyclopedia covers economic history from Paleolithic times to the present of 1999, with just over 1,000 articles on the major terms, overviews, issues, biographies, events and companies of America's economic history. There is a single extensive index in the back of the second volume.
    Foster Business Library Reference, CALL NUMBER: HC102 .G35 1999.

    See volume two, pages 359 to 360, for references to Mergers.

  • Puget Sound Business Journal book of lists.
    This annual publication is an invaluable source of information about public and private companies in the Puget Sound area, culled from lists that appeared weekly in the Puget Sound Business Journal. Besides lists of the largest and fastest growing public and private companies in the area, this reference work includes commercial real estate deals, banks and securities firms, contractors, education and employment, etc. There is an index to companies and topics in the back of this volume.
    Foster Business Library Reference, CALL NUMBER: HC108 .S77 .P83 2007.

    See the top area Mergers and Acquisitions transactions, in the past year, on pages 28 to 31.

  • The corporate acquisition guide.
    This older title is a useful source for researching older mergers and acquisitions transactions, with a summary of acquisitions from 1881 to 1997.
    Foster Business Library Reference, CALL NUMBER: HD2746.55 .U5 .C67 1997.

  • The encyclopedia of management.
    This one-volume covers 348 management topics, arranged alphabetically from Activity-Based Costing to Zero-Sum Game.
    Foster Business Library Reference, CALL NUMBER: HD30.15 .E49 2000.

    See Mergers and Acquisitions on pages 622 to 623.

  • Business: the ultimate resource.
    This 2,200-page single volume is "designed to offer a wide range of insights, information, and practical guidance on every aspect of management" via 2.5 million words of text from 200 contributors, with 700 illustrations and 150 maps, in seven major sections including best practice, a management library, business thinkers and management giants, a business dictionary, a world business almanac, and a guide to business sources.
    Foster Business Library Reference, CALL NUMBER: HD38.15 .B878 2002.

    See Why mergers fail and how to prevent it on pages 81 to 82.

  • Mergerstat review.
    This annual publication is the major reference work on mergers and acquisitions, with a statistical analysis of the previous year's activity, an industry analysis, a geographic analysis (by state and country), a historical review, and a list of transactions, arranged by SIC code.
    Foster Business Library Reference, CALL NUMBER: HD2741 .M5 2006.
    (Also available in LexisNexis Academic, since 1989)

  • The Mergent company archives manual.
    2,700 U.S. companies that merged, were acquired, went bankrupt, or became private companies from 1996 to 2000.
    Foster Business Library Reference, CALL NUMBER: HD2746.55 .U5 .M466 2001.

  • The Mergent company archives manual supplement.
    U.S. companies that merged, were acquired, went bankrupt, or became private companies since 2001.
    Foster Business Library Reference, CALL NUMBER: HD2746.55 .U5 .M466 2002-

  • The ultimate accountants' reference.
    This accounting reference work provides an overview of accounting, accounting rules and regulations and the bodies that produce those rules, accounting reports, balance sheets and income statements, accounting management, financial management, other accounting topics, accounting ratios, a dictionary of accounting terms, and a due diligence checklist.
    Foster Business Library Reference, CALL NUMBER: HF5616 .U5 .B713 2006.

    See Mergers and Acquisitions on pages 623 to 654.

  • Dictionary of finance and investment terms.
    Published by Barrons, this small, thick paperback defines and explains over 4,000 finance and investment terms, including many related to bonds.
    Foster Business Library Reference, CALL NUMBER: HG151 .D69 1998.

    See definitions of Acquisitions on page seven and Merger on pages 209 and 210.

  • A financial history of the United States.
    This three-volume encyclopedia covers U.S. financial history from 1492 to 2001, with a combination of "broad stroke history and lively anecdote," written single-handedly by a law professor at the University of North Carolina.
    Foster Business Library Reference, CALL NUMBER: HG181 .M297 2001.

    See volume three, index page 434, for many references to Mergers.

  • Business rankings annual.
    This annual volume provides 5,000 rankings of companies, products, services and business activities, with data culled from thousands of sources.
    Foster Business Library Reference, CALL NUMBER: HG4050 .B88 2004.

    See the extensive listings for Corporate Acquisition and Merger Services and Corporate Acquisitions and Mergers on pages 213 to 234, as well as Corporate Divestitures on pages 235 to 236.

  • LexisNexis corporate affiliations.
    This extensive eight-volume set details corporate affiliations and subsidiaries for U.S. public and private companies, as well as for international companies.
    Foster Business Library Reference, CALL NUMBER: HG4057 .A219 2006.

    See the Mergers, Acquisitions, and Name Change sections in the beginning of volume three (for U.S. public companies), volume five (for U.S. private companies), and volume seven (for international companies), for the April 2003—March 2004 period.

  • Mergent's handbook of common stocks.
    This quarterly publication provides quick, easy access to information on more than 900 stocks included in major indices, one page per company, with stock price charts, statistics, and analysis, recent developments and prospects, arranged alphabetically by company name. There are also charts for the Dow Jones Industrial Average and New York Stock Exchange activity during the quarter.
    Foster Business Library Reference, CALL NUMBER: HG4501 .M59 (Quarterly)

    See Latest Developments in the front of each volume for merger and acquisitions information for the past quarter.

  • The outlook (Standard and Poor's).
    This black ring-binder holds weekly issues of this twelve-page publication, oriented towards the stock market, with a weekly asset allocation recommendation, a paragraph entitled Looking Ahead, a narrative analysis of current stock market conditions, a listing of exceptionally attractive stocks, a review of market measures, and S&P's changes in analysts rankings for the past week, using a star system. There are also pages for recent upgrades, attractive low risk stocks, and questions and answers, portfolio planning and portfolio management, etc.
    Foster Business Library Reference, CALL NUMBER: HG4501 .O88.

    While there is no regular section on mergers and acquisitions, the effects of such transactions are often noted in evaluations of the stock potential of individual companies involved in such transactions.

  • The directory of obsolete securities.
    Useful for researching older companies involved in mergers and acquisitions, with brief profiles of companies and banks whose original identities changed due to name changes, mergers, acquisitions, dissolution, etc.
    Foster Business Library Reference, CALL NUMBER: HG4921 .D56 1994.

  • Capital changes reporter.
    Useful for researching older companies involved in mergers and acquisitions, this ten volume black ring binder set is updated regularly.
    Foster Business Library Reference, CALL NUMBER: KF1428 .A6 .C65

    Foster Business Library Books:

    The Foster Business Library maintains a collection of over 70,000 books on all business topics. To search for materials on all three campuses of the University of Washington, go to the UW Libraries Catalog, in the upper left corner of the Foster Business Library homepage. Search by keyword, title, author, series, etc.

    To limit the results of your search just to materials in the Foster Business Library collection, use the Modify or Limit options at the top of the search results and change the library location to Foster Business Library. Availablity is indicated on the right of each online catalog record. First, note in which collection, within Foster, your materials are in, since the library has ten different Collections, each in a different location and often with differing arrangements. "Available" indicates that the book should be on the shelves under that call number and available for you to check out. "Due" and a date indicates that the book is already checked out to someone and is due back on the date indicated; you can have the "Request/Place Hold" feature to recall the book for your use.

    If the material you want is not in the collections of the University of Washington, you can use the "Search Summit" feature to repeat your search in the combined holdings of over thirty cooperating libraries in Washington and Oregon. Use the "Request This Item" feature in Summit to have books in those library sent here to Foster for you to check out.

    The Foster general stacks collection is located south of the main part of the Foster Business Library, through the two pass-throughs into the basement of Balmer. The arrangement is by call number, from A (at the east end, near the Copy Center) to Z (at the far west end).

    A keyword search for Mergers & Acquisitions produced a list of over 160 records in the UW Libraries, including 13 records in the Foster Business Library. Recent examples include:

    A search for the subject Consolidation and Merger of Corporations produced a list of over 690 records in the UW Libraries, including over 320 records in the Foster Business Library. Recent examples include:

    Related subjects, and Foster Business Library holdings, include:

    Foster Business Library Corporate Annual Reports:

    The Foster Business Library maintains a collection of several thousand annual reports for hundreds of U.S. and foreign companies. These reports are filed in lateral filing cabinets near the Foster Reference desk under the sign Corporate Annual Reports. Annual reports for companies in an industry can be a valuable source of information about the industry itself. For a list of all the companies in the collection, see the library's Corporate Annual Reports Collection. For an index to corporate annual reports in the collection by industry sector, see the Annual Reports Industry Sector Index. For an index to companies in the collection with headquarters outside the U.S., see Corporate Annual Reports Headquarters Index.

    See the list of companies to find annual reports for the many companies that have been acquired or have merged.

    Foster Business Library Articles:

    Articles in academic journals, magazines, trade periodicals, and newspapers are one of the best sources for any kind of research. While the Foster Business Library offers a large periodicals print collection, comprising over 800 titles, articles are most easily accessed online, 24/7, in such fulltext article databases as EBSCO Business Source Premier, Factiva, LexisNexis Academic, Newsbank Infoweb, and ProQuest Databases. These article databases are available in the library or from off-campus, and provide access to over 10,000 periodicals and millions of articles.

    Library access to most ProQuest databases will terminate at the end of spring quarter 2008, except for ProQuest NewsStand, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, Historical New York Times, and the Historical Wall Street Journal. For more about this change, see UW Libraries Providing New Databases. After this change, comprehensive article searches should be performed in EBSCO Business Source Premier, Newsbank Infoweb, and ProQuest NewsStand. Also, after this change, links to the articles below will be broken.

    ProQuest Databases:

    This database--actually, a family of over two dozen databases--offers full text articles for over 10,000 publications, including scholarly journals, magazines, trade and industry periodicals, newspapers, and reports on a very wide range of topics. To find articles on specific topics, search by word or phrase by keying your search phrase into the search box--or search for your topic in the Topic Guide.

    Your search terms will be highlighted in red in each article.

    Included in this database, in full text, are such publications as:

    A subject search for SUB(Mergers & Acquisitions) produced over 420,000 articles, including over 4,800 articles in scholarly journals, over 19,000 articles in magazines, over 130,000 articles in trade publications, and over 218,000 newspaper articles.

    These large article sets may be made smaller by combining the subject with another subject, such as a company or personal name, as in SUB(Mergers & Acquisitions) and SUB(Citicorp) or SUB(Mergers & Acquisitions) and CO(Ford Motor Co) or SUB(Mergers & Acquisitions) and NA(Rupert Murdoch).

    You can also search for this topic by using the subject search SUB(Acquisitions & Mergers), which produces over 450,000 articles.

    Some examples from the searches above:

    Help:
    22 July 2005; updated 25 March 2008.   Peter Stevens, Business Librarian, stevens@u.washington.edu