Compaq-DEC: What Went Wrong?
from the merger-mania-looking-back dept
The Economist is running a series looking back at a number of big mergers that went wrong, to see what happened. The first on the list is Compaq’s acquisition of DEC a few years ago. It’s a great case study of how a company tries to deal with the world that’s changing around it. Compaq tried to buy DEC (a company that had already lost the battle to a changing world) in order to try to bring themselves into the future (see the problem?). Then try integrating two companies that are struggling to change with the times, and watch the problems that show up.
