Megamergers:
Bigger profits, graver exploitation

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Only three oil giants remain out of the "seven sisters" in the 1970s. Only two companies now manufacture big commercial airplanes. There are now only eleven independent car manufacturers when there used to be 40.

The number of dominant companies in various industries worldwide continues to shrink. Companies are merging and gobbling up other companies and capital concentrated in the hands of an ever smaller number of monopolists worldwide at an accelerating pace.

The avalanche of mergers since 1995 is especially notable. Up to 85% of world investments since then have gone into such mergers. The year 1999 was a high point when over 32,000 mergers valued at $3.4 trillion took place. This was triple the number of mergers in 1989 and over 30 times those recorded in 1981.

Cross-border mergers. Large and powerful companies gobble up not only companies within their base countries but those in other countries as well. In fact, the heightened concentration and centralization of capital internationally is most evident in the unprecedented level of cross-border mergers. Since the late 1980s, cross-border mergers have been the main driving force of direct foreign investments, meaning, a significant part of world capital flow has gone into the change of ownership of existing businesses and enterprises. Most of what has been considered direct investments in previous years did not involve the establishment of new factories and industrial infrastructure.

Since the 1980s, the value of cross-border mergers has almost doubled, coming to $1.1 trillion by the end of the 1990s. While the value of such mergers hardly comprised 20% of the total in the early 1980s, they now comprise 33%.

Companies in Western Europe and North America have been the most active in such mergers. Enterprises in underdeveloped countries are among the most coveted targets of acquisition, especially since the implementation of the policies of liberalization, deregulation and privatization.

This torrent of mergers also means greater power for large transnational corporations. Around a third of world trade today is intrafirm or takes place between companies owned by the same transnational corporation. A classic example of power resulting from intrafirm trade is the oil companies' ability to raise the prices of petroleum products at will.

Through mergers, transnational corporations are able to dominate the domestic markets of many countries through the further expansion of their network of local plants and offices. In 1998, transnationals earned $11 trillion from their subsidiaries in various countries. This is astounding, considering that the total value of exports of all countries that year came to a mere $6.7 trillion!

Blows on the proletariat. The unprecedented rush of monopoly company mergers indicates the intensity of the crisis of the world capitalist system. As the crisis worsens, many companies weaken and are eliminated in competition, and if they do not collapse altogether, are gobbled up by bigger rivals.

In the process, it is the workers of merging companies who are worst hit. Mergers are a means for monopoly capitalists to reduce their workforce while expanding the company's scope of operations, thus further enlarging their profits. The Daimler-Benz and Chrysler merger, for example, resulted in an estimated $25 million in savings for the company due to the closure of some of its plants.

A company is also able to exploit the cheaper labor-power in the base country of the company it acquires. Thus, aside from the loss of millions of jobs, the remaining workforce is subjected to more severe capitalist exploitation.

On the other hand, mergers link an ever-growing number of workers. As capital gets more and more centralized, labor gets more socialized at the international level.

The acceleration of imperialist mergers is a factor for the intensification of the fundamental contradictions of the capitalist system. Conditions are excellent for the resurgence of the revolutionary struggle of the proletariat worldwide.

07 February 2005
English Edition

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