Mergers and acquisitions synergies for US third-party logistics providers

This study adopts DEA, multiple discriminant analysis and cluster analysis to construct the Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) model and evaluate influential factors by studying 20 Third-Party Logistic (TPL) providers in the US-based on the synergy theory. The M&A model can provide insightful information on the M&A decision. It is also found that important factors generally used in the past financial research on M&A do not exhibit significant influence, showing the primary key factor is to achieve operational synergy in M&A, not financial synergy in this study. This paper makes some recommendations that assessed the targets performance before M&A activity in order to improve the chance of successful growth for logistics firms.