You have been employed as an advisor to Davies.com which employs 5000 people across 10 countries. They develop software for companies in the Financial Services sector around the world. They have been in existence for 15 years but feel that they need to grow and be a larger player in the industry and are considering merging with another similar sized organisation (Smith.com). They have had preliminary discussions with Smith.com but are aware that many Mergers and Acquisitions (M & A) fail. They have heard that there can be many problems that arise during the many phases of the M&A lifecycle. You are required to: Write a report outlining to Davies.com the various phases of the M & A Acquisition Lifecycle that two companies go through before, during and after they complete the merger or acquisition. You are required to identify the potential problems that may be encountered at each phase. You can make any reasonable assumptions providing you clearly state the assumptions. Please note Davies.com and Smith.com are fictitious companies. (1000words limit).

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1. Introduction: provide the definition of Merger and acquisition with references.
2. Discuss the M&A lifecycle Model, challenges encountered by the financial company at each stage of the M&A Lifecycle.
3. a report to the management of the company including the reasons for high failure rate in M&A strategy when adopted by both companies.
4. Discuss a company that you have selected and analyzed the reasons for M&A failure based on your knowledge of the industry.