Take Overs and Mergers

A Level Business  – Take overs and mergers

by Philip Greening-Jackson.

Business studies is an essentially practical subject. For this reason it is important to have current, up to date information. This is nowhere more important than in the subject of take overs and mergers.

Take overs and mergers are a favourite area for A Level course exam questions. Don’t expect a 20 mark question on the subject, but they often form part of a question. If you have read up on the subject these are easy marks.

So you really could do worse than find out a bit about the Tesco, Booker merger which is in all the headlines at present. See BBC News. It is a story of which, as a business student, you should be aware and it also provides evidence to an examiner that you have that level of current knowledge that marks out the excellent student from the others.

Words of caution!

If you read up on a subject and have it at your fingertips, and then it isn’t asked in the exam, don’t put it into an answer where it is completely irrelevant just to “get it off your chest”. There are no marks for that and you will simply be wasting time in the exam. It is a bit like the story about a little boy. He knew the word “marmalade”. That was the longest word in his vocabulary so he used to try to steer the conversation round to what had been eaten at breakfast so that he could use his long word!

Please do not think “Philip knows what is on the exam and he is hinting”. I don’t know what is in your exam. Even if I did, I would not be allowed to tell you. So make sure to cover the whole syllabus.