Acquisitions Happen; Mergers Are What Employees Think Happen

John Taylor, VP Research at the National Venture Capital Association was in Dallas on Tuesday to speak to the Southwest Venture Forum with an update for 2008. It was an interesting speech with some great data about Texas. Hopefully the slides will be posted soon that give the breakdown; in the interim the raw data is available from the PriceWaterhouseCooper Money Tree site.

It wasn't the update on VC activity that was the most interesting to me, however. It was when discussing Mergers and Acquisitions activity for 2007 that Mr. Taylor said something I found to be totally true and yet something no one ever discusses. He asked the audience "when was the last time you heard of a merger?" His point was that it is almost always one company acquiring the other, often it is not "happy" as he said, but forced, and that employees are almost always told it's a "merger." He said, in fact, that he only uses the term "M&A" when he doesn't have enough room on a PowerPoint slide for the word "Acquisitions".