European market integration through technology driven M&As

Abstract

Merger and acquisitions (M&As) have been an important tool for reorganizing the European market since the establishment of European Economic and Monetary Union. This paper suggests that European integration helped and encouraged European firms to source technology across national borders in Europe, establishing European innovative firms. The figures confirm that, once barriers impeding the free movement of capital, goods and labor had fallen, European firms used M&As intensively to enter foreign European markets. Enhancing technology competencies is found to be one of the main motives for cross-border acquisitions in the 1990s but is not a factor in domestic acquisitions over the same period.