7 Worst Mergers of All Time

By siliconindia | Tuesday, 10 March 2015, 12:39 Hrs

# Sprint and Nextel Communications- $35 Billion

In 2005, a $35 billion purchase made Sprint to acquire a majority stake in Nextel Communications and the combination became the third largest telecommunication provider after AT&T and Verzion. By gaining access to each other's customer bases, both companies hoped to grow by cross-selling their product and service offerings.

These two companies believed that merging opposite ends of a market’s spectrum would create one big happy communication family.

Soon after the amalgamation, huge amount of Nextel executives and mid-level managers left the company, because of the cultural differences and incongruity. Sprint was bureaucratic and Nextel was entrepreneurial.

The Sprint and Nextel began layoffs and its stocks crashed down; for all those involved, the merger clearly failed.

#Vodafone and Mannesmann- £23.5 billion

Mannesmann was acquired by Vodafone Group Plc. in 2000 in a tax-free stock exchange of 53.7 Vodafone shares for each share of Mannesmann. This was a controversial takeover, since never before in Germany had a large company been acquired by a foreign owner.

Later the tie up was broken and all manufacturing-related operations were sold off. Vodafone faced massive losses after one-off costs of more than £23.5 billion connected to the Mannesmann deal in 2006.