Dear Colleague

We hope you enjoyed Issue 1 of Dialog Competitive Intelligence News. Based on your comments and beginning with this issue, we will focus each newsletter on a specific area of competitive intelligence that is important to your business needs. In this issue we take a look at information needs for mergers, acquisitions and partnerships.

Stories include information on key Dialog and DataStar databases containing M&A information, special indexing and search techniques to find just the information you need. We also explore merger and acquisition issues specifically relevant to companies working in or planning to enter the China market. Finally, sources written by experts offer other perspectives on the topic.

In future newsletters we plan to highlight other competitive intelligence issues, like private and international company information, product launches, licensing opportunities and more. So...stay tuned.

Bob Stewart, Senior Manager
Product Marketing

Highlight: Key Databases for Mergers & Acquisitions

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and corporate restructuring are a big part of the corporate finance world. Regardless of the country in which the companies are located, Dialog NewsRoom (File 990/NEWS)—with over 11,000 sources covering all industries—can provide a heads-up to potential M&A activity. Deals can be worth hundreds of millions, or even billions, of dollars. They can dictate the fortunes of the companies involved for years to come.

Dialog contains content enabling you to track merger and acquisition activity from inklings of potential M&As in the news and trade press, to ongoing discussions and changes to the terms of the merger, to viewing profiles of the companies involved, which might include financial, subsidiary and company data. While we do not have enough space here to mention all sources on the Dialog and DataStar services that contain M&A data, this article highlights some of them.

Key Sources

A related database, TFSD Joint Ventures & Alliances (File 554), updated daily, covers such business deals worldwide as joint ventures, strategic sales and marketing pacts, licensing, and distribution agreements

News/Business Sources

Odds are good that the next time you open the newspaper's business section, at least one headline will announce some kind of M&A transaction. Regardless of what country the companies may be located, Dialog NewsRoom (File 990/NEWS) with over 11,000 sources covering all industries can provide a heads-up to potential M&A activity. Dialog Global Reporter (File 20/REPO), a comprehensive, global news source, also contains newswires, leading newspapers and business magazines from all regions of the world. These sources will continue to monitor a company's M&A activity as it progresses. Additionally, general business trade press, including Gale Group Trade & Industry Database™ (File 148/INDY), Gale Group PROMT® (File 16/PTSP) and Business & Industry™ (File 9/BIDB), covers M&A activity for multiple industries and markets.

All of these databases can be searched using the same commands and techniques either on Dialog or DataStar. A DIALINDEX®/OneSearch® category (MERGEACQ) on Dialog lets you search all of these databases and more for your merger or acquisition information.

Using Indexing for Better Results

Although much information about mergers and acquisitions is available on the Web, that does not mean that you can find it quickly, in one place, in a convenient format, or that you can easily ascertain the details of a transaction. Dialog databases with their detailed indexing, date limitations and duplicate record removal feature make locating the information quick and easy.

The major business and industry databases (see sidebar list) offer extensive coverage of M&A activity across the globe. Each tags stories relating to a merger or acquisition with specific descriptor terms to simplify retrieval. While each producer uses slightly different terms, on Dialog and DataStar the identical search strategy works in all. Combine the index term with a company, industry or country name to pull just the stories you want.

The basic search strategy is to search the word "mergers" or the word "acquisitions" (or both) as descriptor terms. The strategy works on both Dialog (s mergers/de or s acquisitions/de) and DataStar (mergers.de. or acquistions.de.)

Take, for example, the pending merger of two pharmaceutical companies in Europe. You can follow the activity in the news (Files 990 and 20) or trade press (Files 16,148,9) and find with a simple search that two top pharmaceutical companies—Bayer AG and Merck—submitted bids for Schering, the amounts of the bids and responses from Schering. See the sidebar "Sample M&A Search on Dialog" for a search to obtain this information.

Focus on M&A in China

If you want to do business in a country, for example, China, what would you face? What are the challenges for business forming a strategic partnership? What are the rules? EIU databases on Dialog and DataStar—EIU: Country Analysis (File 627/EICA), EIU Country Risk and Forecasts (File 628/EIRF), EIU: Market Research (File 768/EIMR), and EIU: ViewsWire (File 620/EIVW)—provide background, key developments, forecasts, conditions for doing business and more on over 180 countries worldwide.

For example, a Country Commerce Report on China, dated March 2006, in File 627 reports that although "acquisitions make up a comparatively small portion of total foreign-investment flows into China, they are on the rise. According to M&A Asia and Dealogic, foreign acquisitions of local Chinese companies more than tripled in 2004, to US$18.7bn, following three years when such acquisitions had averaged US$5bn per year."

By reviewing the Table of Contents of a report, you can retrieve exactly the sections of the report that offer the information you need. In this report, sections entitled "Organising an investment: Acquisition of an existing firm" and another "Competition and price policies: Mergers" provide information on M&A in China. Other sections of the same report include information on licensing, the economy, political conditions, direct foreign investment and much more. See the sidebar "Locating Country Information" for a search strategy to obtain this report.

M&A: What You Need to Know

Important issues surrounding mergers and acquisitions are discussed in a group of papers at the Web site themanager.org. Papers cover subjects of due diligence, post-merger integration, pricing and other topics. Various papers range from avoiding perils in due diligence and cultural and brand due diligence to implementing a takeover to a merger integration blueprint. Click here to see additional publications including "Mergers and Corporate Cultures."

The Need for Business Partnering in the Global Marketplace

In addition to mergers and/or acquisitions, partnering can be another important part of a company's strategy. Read Professor Ruth Taplin's article entitled "Innovation Business Partnering in Europe and the USA – Are European SMEs Losing the Battle?" The article discusses how European SMEs can compete with cheaper suppliers from the Asia Pacific, and with more technologically advanced offerings from the United States.

Professor Taplin, Director of The Centre for Japanese and East Asian Studies and author/editor of numerous books and articles in the area of economics, points out that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are an important part of every country's economy. In Europe she says, "65% of European Gross Domestic Product (GDP) comes from small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), compared to 45% in the U.S." She discusses a partnering strategy for these European businesses so they can compete with U.S. and Asian companies.

Call for Contributors

Participate in knowledge sharing with your colleagues interested in topics related to competitive intelligence. Share your story suggestions with us at support.dialog.com/enewsletters/contribute/.