Many acquisitions and some large strategic investments are often justified with
the argument that they will create synergy. In this paper, we consider the various sources of synergy and categorize them into operating and financial synergies. We then examine how best to value synergy in any investment and how sensitive this value is to different assumptions. We also look at how this synergy value should be divided between the parties (or companies) involved in the investment. We conclude with an empirical examination of how much synergy is actually created in corporate mergers, and how much is paid. Synergy, we conclude, is so seldom delivered in acquisitions because it is

incorrectly valued, inadequately planned for and much more difficult to create in practice than it is to compute on paper.

许多收购和一些大型战略投资往往有理由认为，它们将创造协同效应。在本文中，我们考虑各种来源的协同作用，并将其分类为运营和财务协同。然后，我们研究如何最好地评估任何投资中的协同效应，以及这种价值对不同假设的敏感性。我们还将研究如何在参与投资的各方（或公司）之间分配这种协同价值。最后，我们对企业合并中实际产生了多少协同效应以及支付了多少进行了实证检验。我们的结论是，协同效应很少在收购中实现，因为它的价值不正确，规划不充分，而且在实践中比纸面上计算要困难得多。