Blog 6

I have always thought that only big companies in the market can buy off smaller companies to use them to their advantage. After attending this week’s lectures, I have learned that a company that intends to buy another company off its owners does not necessarily mean it wants more power or to gain more market shares. Mergers and acquisitions happen almost every day and it is not surprising because of the advantages it brings. Two companies working together will bring more synergy than their competitors and will also have more market power, good economies of scale and many other benefits. If things work out well, a successful merge will often result in an increase of profitability. However, not ever mergers and acquisition work out and the attempt of doing so might affect the companies’ share prices. The knowledge acquired in the lectures this week will be useful to me in writing my assignment as it talks about the failure of Fiat Chrysler to start merger discussions with General Motors.

The seminar for this week is rather laid back as we do not have to prepare anything prior because there is an assignment discussion with the tutor. For me, the most significant experience that I have gained here is definitely how to be more prepared. Previously, I do not really prepare for classes and because tutors would just give us the answers to the questions. Unlike studying here, we have to prepare for classes or else we might be asked to leave the class and that has somewhat improved my way of learning. Another thing that I have noticed is that the European students are generally more vocal and brave to voice out their opinions in the classroom. Looking back, and even now whenever I am with my fellow Asian friends in class, I realized that we tend to be quiet and timid when asked for opinions that we shy away from voicing them. We would just let the lecturers and tutors do all the talking. After the assignment discussion in the seminar, we were asked to form groups to have an informal evaluation of our blogs progress so far. I was grouped with 2 Europeans and 1 Chinese. We looked at each other’s’ blog posts and needless to say, I did not have much to comment. However, I received a lot of comments from both the European students and I have learned things that I would not have thought about. I kind of feel bad for them as the Chinese girl and I did not really give constructive comments to the European students. Having attended the seminar this week has helped me form a deeper understanding of what the assignment questions really ask of us. Additionally, I have received constructive criticism on how to write my blog posts better from my fellow classmates.