I think certain personality traits often found in executives and management contribute to the reasons they think their M&A deal will succeed despite the statistics and odds saying otherwise. Being optimistic and in some cases over-confident are two of these leadership traits and result in thinking that your organization will be different and overcome the odds. Korath made a good point about what “success” means in the context of an M&A deal because that also needs to be defined before assessing whether it was a success or not. Is success measured against the specific objectives of the organization for wanting to do the deal, or is it purely economical and realization of synergies?
