ada apa dengan merger?

On 27 November 2006, CIMB Investment Bank presented a proposal to merge the operations of Sime Darby, Golden Hope and Guthrie into a single entity.

The offer, valued at more than RM30 billion, will make Synergy Drive, the combined entity, the 6th largest company in Bursa Malaysia by market capitalisation.

Synergy Drive will also be the biggest plantation group in the world.

It will have a market value of RM31 billion, 600,000 hectares of plantations, 107,000 workforce and operations from Indonesia to Venezuela.

Synergy Drive's revenue of RM26 billion, will be bigger than the GDP of countries such Cameroon, Rwanda or Nicaragua.

The company's landbank will be 20 times the size of Singapore.

It seems like the merger is driven by the principle that size does matters.

Being big allows you to reap the benefits of economies of scale.

With size come dominance.

But someone, perhaps have forgotten, to remind CIMB that in the new world, being big does not neccesarily mean better.

Scale didn't insulate GM (General Motors) from catastrophic decline.

It didn't help British Airways (BA) from being hit by smaller rivals like Virgin, Ryan Air or British Midlands.

And it certainly didn't prevent the biggest man made floating object - the Titanic, from sinking.