My Dilemma (acquisition, merger and initial public offer) Research Paper

My Dilemma (acquisition, merger and initial public offer) - Research Paper Example How the Dilemma came about One Monday morning when I got to the office, something strange and out of protocol happened. Hitherto, I rarely had any say on proposals for growth and expansion. I was more or less a passive observer who was around to learn from his superiors. This time round I was not even asked to give contributions towards a proposal to be sent to management but to select one of three choices management had taken on a long term growth and expansion move. Most of the time, proposals from my department to management were discarded but when proposals came from management to my department, it meant that the proposal was certainly going to be implemented. This means that the choice I made was going to be implemented. For a student on internship to decide the long term growth and expansion program for the multi million advertising company was indeed a herculean task. The dilemma was also with the fact that I had to choose among options given by management. The options were acquisition, merger and initial public offer. The company was considering either purchasing an events organization company or merging with the events organization company or putting its shares on public offer as a means of expanding the existing company. This was a dilemma because all three options had their own advantages and disadvantages. It was indeed difficult pointing out which of the options was going to be better than the either. Meaning of the three options Merger has been explained by Farlex (2011) to be â€Å"a combination of two or more companies in which the assets and liabilities of the selling firm(s) are absorbed by the buying firm.† It continues to posit that in the event of merger, there is a â€Å"decision by two companies to combine all operations, officers, structure, and other functions of business† (Farlex (2011). To this effect, it meant th at if I chose the option of merger, my company would have been tagged as the buying firm. It also meant that by merger, our company was going to combine all its operation, staff, structure and organizational culture with the selling firm. The new company that was going to be formed out of the merger was not going to be under the outright ownership of our firm but then ownership shared by the two companies in question. The Investopedia (2011) on the other hand explains that â€Å"when one company takes over another and clearly established itself as the new owner, the purchase is called an acquisition.† The implication of this definition is that if this choice was chosen by me, our company was