Merger Between Staples And Office Depot

A relevant market is defined as a market where “sellers, if unified by a hypothetical cartel or merger, could raise prices significantly above the competitive level”. The main focus here is not whether other office retailers have anything in common with office superstores, but whether a sufficient number of customers will continue buying from them despite of significant price increases. The relevant market in the case includes only Office Depot, Staples, and Office Max in some areas. The proposed merger will most likely create a monopoly and significantly reduce competition. The evidence shows that even if the new monopolist raises the prices by more than 5%, the majority of customers will not consider such retailers as Wal-Mart, BestBuy, Target, Kmart as substitutes for

Omnicare, Inc., (NYSE: OCR) and CVS Health Corporation (NYSE: CVS), are two competitive firms in different industries. A press release announces that “CVS Health and Omnicare sign a definitive agreement for CVS Health to acquire Omnicare” ("CVS Health and Omnicare Sign a Definitive Agreement for CVS Health to Acquire Omnicare," 2015). The purpose of this paper is to discuss the merger of CVS and Omnicare. First, the paper describes the principal firms in the merger and the industry in which each operates. Secondly, the paper discusses the incentives to consolidate from the viewpoints of each firm. Thirdly, the writer explains the competitive environment in the industry and how it benefits the firms and society.

This article is about the threat of merger and the influence of a monopolistic media. The

US faced a major recession during the year 2007 and this created a major pre-recession impact and post-recession impact on various retail stores. Customers started looking on for deals in retail market as they had less money to spend. The following document is all about the growth of four major retail giants namely the Kohl’s, Target, Walmart, and Macy’s whose growth over the period 2003 – 2013 are compared and contrasted. Walmart was the only company to increase in sales from the all the above companies as they targeted the lower end customers.

Abstract This case study discusses briefly the economic and legal issues pertaining to the antitrust case of the United States and a number of States against Microsoft.

The Federal Trade Commission has taken the first step toward blocking the proposed $6.3 billion merger of Staples and Office Depot, saying the deal would hurt competition in the market for office supplies sold to large corporations. They made the complaint that the merge violated antitrust laws. "The Commission has reason to believe that the proposed merger between Staples and Office Depot is likely to eliminate beneficial competition that large companies rely on to reduce the costs of office supplies," said FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez. The FTC has blocked the merge of these companies since 1997. The companies have released a joint statement saying that they think the FTC vision of the market is "based on a flawed analysis and misunderstanding

In September of 1996 superstores Staples and Office Depot, had developed a proposal to merge, in the following month the companies had gone and met with the FTC to let the agency know that both companies had an intention to merge into one company. Both Staples and Office Depot are both office-supply stores, and had decided to merge in order to keep the costs low as well as keeping their consumers happy. The FTC, however, didn't like the companies' idea of merging so the staff decided to launch an investigation of the proposed merger in order to determine if the companies would violate the anti-trust laws. This, however wasn't approved by the FTC, and a lawsuit was soon followed, questioning the companies, which resulted with both Office Depot and Staples challenging the FTC's decision vigorously. This case was set before both an administrative judge and a federal judge. However, the federal judge was considering whether or not to issue an injunction during this time.

A merger is a partial or total combination of two separate business firms and forming of a new one. There are predominantly two kinds of mergers: partial and complete. Partial merger usually involves the combination of joint ventures and inter-corporate stock purchases. Complete mergers are results in blending of identities and the creation of a single succeeding firm. (Hicks, 2012, p 491). Mergers in the healthcare sector, particularly horizontal hospital mergers wherein two or more hospitals merge into a single corporation, are increasing both in frequency and importance. (Gaughan, 2002). This paper is an attempt to study the impact of the merger of two competing healthcare organization and will also attempt to propose appropriate

The Office Supply Stores industry has faced tough conditions during the past five years. Although the recession accelerated the industry's decline, traditional office supply stores have long been under pressure from the changing digital landscape and fierce external competition. The value of the industry reached $15 billion in 2015. It had an annual growth of 5.5% in 2011-2015.

In a recent change within Staples Inc. they have begun to shut down 140 of its 330 stores located across North America under scoring the pressure that big box retailers feel from rival e-commerce and discount players. With the end of the plan resulting in 225 stores being closed down as a choice of Staples trying to reduce their square footage. Due to this change within the company Staples Inc. must take in to account what this change will do to their company’s infrastructures, price, services, and its reputation. An effect from this down size that Staples Inc. many weaknesses have arose within the company itself that should be taken into consideration before they become a major threat to the company.

As a result of extensive research on various topics, the one area there has been on the rise and is subject to further debate and analysis is the North American free trade agreement. This particular treaty is of interest owing to the current globalization that is fast consuming economies across the world as well as the change in leadership in the three countries involved. As a result, this essay takes into account the current economic state of the world about the increased competition; need to form economic mergers and the role it plays. Therefore, the choice of this key term is as a result of curiosity of the effect of globalization on the formation of economic mergers.

Office Depot is a supplier of office products and services. The company's selection of brand name office supplies includes business machines, computers, computer software and office furniture, while its business services encompass copying, printing, document reproduction, shipping, and computer setup and repair. An S&P 500 company, Office Depot generates revenues of over US $14 billion annually and has 42,000 employees worldwide. It is headquartered in Boca Raton, Florida. Office Depot is one of the biggest office supplies retailers, but its sales revenue decreased dramatically 26% from 14.5 billion dollars in 2008 to 10.7 billion dollars in 2012.

FTC claimed that based on various analysis and evidence, proposed merger between Staples and Office Depot will harm competition in office superstore chain market and raise market price which will lessen customers’ welfare. Nevertheless, two parties of merger casted doubt on every detailed statement, and interpreted that this merger will reduce costs, broaden scale of economies, improve economic efficiency, and optimize resource allocation, and then lower market price efficiently. Finally, the Court chose to agree with FTC’s contention.

Over the past five years, IBM has quietly transformed itself into a "software, solution and services" company. With the transformation from a hardware vendor to a solution provider, it has entered the area of consulting services.

Mergers and acquisitions have developed to be a widespread occurrence in modern era. A merger of the size like Adidas-Armani has repercussion for the labor force of these companies transversely to the world. Although the integration of units gives an immense arrangement of significance to monetary issues and the effects, there are still some issues are the most commonly ignored ones such as human resources, financial management, marketing, sales etc.. Ironically studies confirm that the majority of the mergers not succeed to convey the preferred results because of people associated concerns. The ambiguity resulted by badly handled management issues in mergers and acquisitions have been the foremost grounds for these collapses.