There is no doubt that M&A is a risky business. With a 70% of plus failure-rate, you might think that B-school professor would do well to discourage their students from launching takeover bids. But you'd be wrong. Austin describes some of the other (good) reasons for mergers and acquisitions:'I suppose the most popular reasons mentioned in CEOs' message to shareholders are developing synergies and making economics of scale these are sometimes conveniently long-term goals! other objectives may be increasing market share; cross-selling, when for example a bank can sell insurance to its existing clients; diversification, if a company is perceived to be too dependent on a niche market; or quite simply taking on debt, the so-called poison pill, in order to make itself a less attractive target for would-be-buyers