Global M&A activity may have seemed to quieten in recent years, but a new megaboom is already underway - exemplified by Facebook's pursuit of Instagram in early 2012 for US1bn in cash and stock. But in an age where two-thirds of all merger deals can be said to fail (where deals fall short of the minimum required financial returns to the acquiring company), how can future success be guaranteed? And what can acquirers, and their shareholders and advisers, do to improve the chances of success? Masterminding the Deal looks at performance in two critical areas - merger segmentation (the identification of critical characteristics and attributes separating more successful mergers from the rest) and category-specific synergy diagnosis (the differentiation of synergy benefits - expenses, revenues, tax - to ensure maximum rewards). Using this in-depth analysis, the book can therefore provide the managers and advisers of acquiring firms with concise and actionable frameworks to improve and enhance merger performance.