Corporate restructuring and firm performance of British and German non-financial firms

This paper examines the ongoing changes in strategy, structure, and performance of the largest 250 non-financial firms in both Britain and Germany. To this end, publicly available firm-level data is presented at first and supplemented by the results of a questionnaire survey that was sent to the chief executives of those companies. What came through from the survey was that many firms in both countries are driven by the desire to specialise and internationalise and are primarily achieving this via ¿horizontal¿ mergers and acquisitions. While seeing a definite convergence in certain areas, clear and distinctive differences remain between the two countries.