If 2008 was the year of the distressed bailout, 2009 will be the year of the super-bank, if not in terms of market capitalisation, then certainly in terms of sheer scale. The recent litter of forced marriages and hasty buy-outs, including the titanic merger of the UK's Lloyds TSB and HBOS, has given birth to a number of over-bloated and painfully complex organisations, the true value of which remains unclear. In the wake of banking mergers on a scale not seen before, many market watchers are now asking the uncomfortable question: is it possible to make these deals work? Large businesses are not particularly good at large-scale transformation at the best of times. Mergers and acquisitions, however, fare particularly badly. In one of the best known and most dispiriting pieces of research on the matter, consultancy firm McKinsey found that a staggering 70% of mergers fail to deliver the anticipated synergies and resulting cost savings. This is particularly true of the banking industry. Research conducted by Michael Koetter, an expert in banking mergers at the Faculty of Economics, University of Groningen, has found that the majority of banking mergers do not reward investors.
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