Power Breakfast: Mergers difficult to execute, Kia record, outsourcing, Hawks, Newell

One Atlanta-based company sells roast beef sandwiches and the Frosty. Another makes folding cartons for fast food. But that’s where the similarities end for Wendy’s/Arby’s Group and Rock-Tenn, writes AJC reporter Jeremiah McWilliams.

Both made big mergers and acquisitions news recently for different reasons.

Rock-Tenn, built on a string of business consolidations over the past 113 years, just proposed its largest yet: a $3.5 billion takeover of Smurfit-Stone, a larger producer of containerboard, the stuff that makes moving boxes. If approved, the deal will triple Rock-Tenn’s size, McWilliams writes.

Ten miles to the west, leaders of Wendy’s/Arby’s have encountered the flip side of a merger. They want to break up the company less than three years after pulling the two brands together, McWilliams writes.

The divergent paths underscore the difficulty of crafting a successful merger or takeover, McWilliams reports. Such deals create some of the diciest issues in American business: cultural clashes, loss of talented employees and financial benefits that prove elusive.

Tread carefully in the minefield, experts say.

Also in the AJC:

• DeKalb reassigns 24 teachers on cheating allegations
• Kia hits sales and profit records
• Sides disagree on benefits of outsourcing jobs
• Lawsuits fly after land deals falter
• Sale of Atlanta Hawks made easier
• Newell sees growth in ‘investment year’

In other media:

• Trader racks up a second epic gain
• Pay shift at Bank of America
• Middle East faces uncertainty as protests swell

- Henry Unger, The Biz Beat

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