Pfizer (PFE, news, msgs), the world’s largest pharmaceuticals company, is to acquire its rival Wyeth (WYE, news, msgs) in a $68 billion deal — the biggest M&A transaction in three years.

In the past few months I have watched banks, investment houses, automakers and others stand up and announce they were too big to fail. That the implications were too serious for the economy if they failed. Our government validated this claim with the bailout. Possibly these HUGE firms became unwieldy and difficult to manage, let alone lead. Clearly SOMETHING was wrong with them. Of course, many have said the only thing wrong was excessive greed.

Whatever, but I really have to wonder how this merger is a good thing for me and my fellow Americans. There haven’t been too many that have had real benefit from what I can tell. I can read the PR but the reality is what matters.

Oh, and here is another peach from the merger front. Chrysler (a weak company), fresh off its bad marriage with Daimler (a strong company) is trying to merge with Fiat (a weak company). This has to fall into the “if you can’t really fix yourself, at least do something to create the illusion of progress” category. If they really want to make an impact I think they should create a new logo too!

This entry was posted on Monday, January 26th, 2009 at 2:23 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.