Overseas Mergers and Acquisitions by Indian Enterprises: Patterns and Motivations

This paper examines the patterns and motivations behind the overseas M&As by Indian enterprises. It is found that a large majority of overseas M&As originated within services sector led by software industry and in overwhelming cases were directed towards developed countries of the world economy. The main motivations of Indian firm’s overseas acquisitions have been to access international market, firm-specific intangibles like technology and human skills, benefits from operational synergies, overcome constraints from limited home market growth, and survive in an increasingly competitive business environment. Further it has been found that overseas acquirers in the case of manufacturing sector tends to be large sized and research intensive, while they are older, large sized and export-oriented in the case of software sector