Worked a couple of buyouts and mergers. Its all about Synergies. The bean counters will list everything done by both companies and score how well each is done and how much is spent on each function. Then they model the merger by eliminating the weaker of each function and calculating saving which is called a synergy. Its usually not as simple as eliminating entire functions though. For example, one co may have a better marketing function… except in APAC region so they calculate the cost/saving of keeping only that small part which might include also keeping the existing capability on the other co. In the end they need to show that the combined entities with the synergies will produce a better more profitable co than the two as separate entities.