Analysis of mergers in Czech agricultural companies

摘要

Agriculture represents a significant part of the national economy. It secures production of food and influences many related processing industries. Although the volume of agricultural production and its proportion in the gross domestic product has been decreasing, there is a huge interest in increasing the performance of agriculture companies. One of the ways to enhance the company performance, to gain new markets or to achieve cost savings is a merger. Mergers are not very usual in the field of agriculture currently - their proportion in the total number of mergers in the Czech Republic in 2001-2013 was 3.07%. The aim of this paper is to analyse mergers in the field of agriculture. The analysis focuses on the consequences of mergers from the perspective of changes in the financial position and the company performance in the year before the merger and three years after the merger. The analysis proved that the company size (measured by the balance sheet total) decreased as a consequence of mergers and their performance increased.