2013年6大失败交易盘点

    OfficeMax公司—欧迪办公公司

    • 交易：OfficeMax公司与欧迪办公公司合并

    他们真应该找美剧《办公室》（Office）中那个名叫迈克尔•斯科特的角色去。

    2月份，欧迪办公公司（Office Depot）宣布与OfficeMax公司合并后，两家公司的首席执行官谁将掌舵新公司？这个问题一直悬而未决。最后，委员会认定两人都不合适。更糟糕的是，似乎也没有人对这个职位感兴趣。11月初公司合并完成后，财富美国500强公司欧迪办公公司依然没有找到新的首席执行官。最后，它找来了出身杂货业、温迪国际快餐连锁集团（Wendy's）的前首席执行官罗兰•史密斯。

    导致情况进一步复杂化的是，联邦贸易委员会（Federal Trade Commission）曾阻挠过此次合并。1996年联邦贸易委员会就曾以反垄断为由，反对过欧迪办公公司与史泰博公司（Staples）合并。此番联邦贸易委员会对外宣布，经过长时间的调查，认定欧迪办公公司和Office Max公司的市场份额正被网上竞争者侵蚀，价格也不可能涨过沃尔玛（Wal-Mart）。委员会认定，就连非超市竞争对手也能从欧迪办公公司和Office Max公司手中抢得份额。于是，委员会同意了此次合并。

    OfficeMax-Office Depot

    • Deal: OfficeMax merges with Office Depot

    Perhaps they should have gone with Michael Scott.

    When Office Depot announced its merger with OfficeMax in February, the companies left open which of their CEOs would end up leading the combined office supply chain. In the end, the search committee decided neither was qualified. Worse, it seemed no one else wanted the job either. When the deal was completed in early November, Office Depot(ODP, Fortune 500) still hadn't found a new CEO. Eventually, the company went with Roland Smith, who came from the grocery business, and had once been the head of Wendy's.

    Also complicating the merger was the fact that the Federal Trade Commission considered blocking the deal. Back in 1996, the FTC had put the kibosh on a deal between Office Depot and Staples for anti-trust reasons. This time around the FTC announced that after a lengthy investigation the agency concluded that both Office Depot and Office Max were losing sales to online competitors and lacked the ability to raise prices above Wal-Mart(WMT, Fortune 500). Even non-superstore competitors, the FTC determined, regularly take business from Office Depot and OfficeMax. So thumbs up guys.