Overview

During the past few decades the global auto industry has concentrated into a small number of groups led by GM, Ford, Daimler-Chrysler, VW, Toyota, and Renault. The trend is of great political and economic significance because of the large size of the industry, its importance to the economic health of many countries, and its geographic spread around the globe. Many reasons are commonly cited when trying to explain this rapid corporate consolidation - cost savings, new products and markets, price controls, and labor negotiations chief among them. Frequently, however, mergers do not achieve their stated goals. Merging Traffic explores all these factors and goes on to suggest that, as with the mystique of the automobile itself, other motivations may prevail.

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Merging Traffic is a readable and fascinating account of the economics and politics of the wave of mergers that has left five major auto groups controlling more than fifty percent of world auto sales. Filled with insights into the dynamics of mergers, this book is essential reading for anyone who wants an up-to-date account of the evolution of the world's auto industry.--James A. Dunn, Jr.

The world of automotive mergers and acquisitions is shrouded in a mist of rhetoric that tends to conceal what is really going on. In Merging Traffic Conybeare deftly cuts through fuzzy thinking to get to the core motivations for automotive mergers and acquisitions. The lessons learned should provide useful guidance for managers now pondering the next big target to acquire. I highly recommend this book, as it stands alone in the field for its comprehensiveness and its clarity of thought. -- Glenn Mercer, director, Automotive Services, McKinsey & Company, Inc. After a period of frenzied mergers in the global automobile industry, many vexing questions regarding the reasons for and seeming lack of benefit from those mergers remain. Are we to be left with merely a desire for corporate size and power as the reason for mergers? Merging Traffic offers some tantalizing evidence and conclusions. No one seriously interested in the industry, from executives to stockholders to analysts to academics, can ignore this superbly presented and argued volume on the failed promises of so many highly touted auto industry mergers. -- Robert R. Ebert, Baldwin-Wallace College Merging Traffic is a readable and fascinating account of the economics and politics of the wave of mergers that has left five major auto groups controlling more than fifty percent of world auto sales. Filled with insights into the dynamics of mergers, this book is essential reading for anyone who wants an up-to-date account of the evolution of the world's auto industry. -- James A. Dunn, Jr., Rutgers University A must-read for auto industry executives and regulators. Highly recommended. * CHOICE * From high tech boom to dot-com bust, the automobile remains at the core of industrial economies. This book provides an invaluable road map for navigating the highways and twisting byways of the international automobile industry and it illuminates important aspects of industry dynamics and economic globalization. -- Jonathan Aronson, University of Southern California

Author Information

John A. C. Conybeare is professor of political science at the University of Iowa.

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