Cross-border acquisitions in technical engineering sector: motives, trends and effects in finnish consultancies

The objective of this study is to explore the cross-border acquisitions purchases and sales of Finnish engineering consulting firms during the years of 1997-2006 in terms of the amount of transactions and the geographical distribution of acquiring and target nations. The focus area of the study the technical engineering and consulting business is a significant sub-sector of technology-related knowledge-intensive business services, which have strongly gained the interest of both practitioners and academic researchers in recent years. The methods utilized in this study consisted of literature reviews in the above-mentioned focus areas, the deal analysis of Finnish engineering consultancies on the basis of Thomson ONE Banker database, as well as the use of secondary data such as annual reports and expert opinions for complementing the analysis. The motives and intended effects of acquisitions were studied and compared to literature reviews and general industry characteristics. Results show that product and market extensions are the most significant types of cross-border acquisitions, which is in line with the existing literature. Expansion and other strategic motives can be seen in the study, but in spite of the increased significance of knowledge-intensity and innovativeness in many industries, knowledge acquisition for promoting innovation and R&D capabilities is not so apparent in the motives. Moreover, the geographical distribution in the Finnish sample does not yet clearly indicate a global movement of the industry towards the east. However, the strategies for market extensions of these knowledge-intensive firms in many cases seem to be implemented by other types of organizational changes than cross-border acquisitions. The results of the study provide several possibilities for in-depth further studies of the motives and effects of acquisitions and future comparative studies of other geographical areas.