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THE JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC SCIENCES: THEORY AND PRACTICE, V.72, # 1, 2015, pp. 61-94

know how in using certain technology and etc that could be applied to several

products or services. In general, if the company wants to acquire certain know how

it is rational to merge or acquire the possessor, since the transfer of knowhow from

one firm to another is not feasible and coherent.

3. Analysis of Energy sector

Throughout the history, mergers and acquisitions have been employed as a

growth strategy tool. There are different motivations for a given company to acquire

or merge with another company. Motives may vary from geographic expansion,

unification of distribution channel, increase in sales, expertise in technology and

know-how depending on objective of the bidder. In energy sector most of decisions

regarding M&A are driven by demand for huge capital investment in technology and

R&D. As a result, necessity to constantly grow in order to maintain the market share

pushes firms to find targets with brand new technology, new skills and acquaintance

with new environment and regulations.

Volume of M&A activities dropped significantly with the crisis stared in 2007,

but recovered eventually and increased in 2011. In United States the increase in

M&A deal volumes was driven by regulation that allowed exploiting shale gas and

other rocks. Our sample constitutes many examples of acquisitions of O&G

companies targeting U.S firms prevailingly based in Houston, Texas. During last

decade top acquirer has been United States with the total value of transactions equal

to $163 billion. The second and third places are taken by United Kingdom ($19

billion) and China ($14 billion) respectively. (Bloomberg, 2011) The statistics

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