Abstract

Background: Sweden has a long history of family-owned investment companies, and they are a big part of today’s financial composition. Mergers & Acquisitions is a well-established term which refers to the process of two or more companies calling for a restruction of the corporate order. However, a large number of M&A’s end up failing and one reason behind this could be the complexity of juggling between hard and soft values in the acquisition process. 

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to look at and explore how family-owned investment companies manage to juggle between the soft and hard values in their pre-acquisition processes. Further the study aims to provide insights into how family values and their governance of these companies impact their overall M&A process.

Method: This study employed a qualitative research design. The empirical data were gathered by conducting semi-structured interviews with nine different individuals employed at six different companies within the M&A industry. Furthermore, an abductive approach was used, and a thematic analysis was conducted to analyze the gathered data. 

Conclusion: Family-owned investment companies have shown that they can successfully manage to juggle the hard and soft values of the M&A process. Mainly through their great experience of building companies as entrepreneurs and therefore applying soft values to the equation, this together with the use of external management weighing up with the hard values to find balance between the two. The shaping of the strategy enabling them to juggle between the two is mainly built around the idea of long-term thinking and including entrepreneurs in their companies through co-owning, enabling them to use the skills and network at hand.