Awful lot of mergers in the news today. These three were back to back in AOL's headline news. How does this tie into Y2K? If it does that is.

Yahoo! To Buy GeoCities

NEW YORK (AP) -- Yahoo! Inc. today announced it would buy GeoCities Inc. for $4.58 billion in a deal that creates the largest Web gateway and speeds the fevered spree of consolidations among Internet companies. The terms represent a substantial premium over GeoCities' current market valuation of about $3.02 billion including outstanding stock options. The deal would give Yahoo! another powerful brand name while helping GeoCities reach more Web users.

Ford To Buy Volvo Division

DEARBORN, Mich. (AP) -- Ford Motor is buying the passenger car division of Sweden's Volvo AB for $6.45 billion, adding another premium brand name to the portfolio of the world's No. 2 automaker. Under the agreement announced today, Ford is expected to assume ownership of Volvo Cars' worldwide sites, including three assembly plants and two powertrain plants in Europe and the passenger-vehicle product development center in Gothenburg, Sweden.

TRW To Acquire LucasVarity

CLEVELAND (AP) -- TRW Inc. is buying British auto parts maker LucasVarity PLC for $7 billion in cash in the latest consolidation in the automotive supply industry. The deal announced today comes only days after LucasVarity rejected a $6.5 billion cash and stock offer from Federal Mogul Corp. and disclosed it was talking to another potential bidder it did not identify.

-- Other Lisa (LisaWard2@aol.com), January 28, 1999

Answers

Don't think there is a tie in. I mean I don't think the companies are doing this so improve their y2k readiness. In fact mergers are usually a drain on a companies resources across all departments. Systems, both computer and manual, have to be consolidated. This can take a long time to complete and is expensive.

I guess one advantage is the merged company can 'cherry pick' the best of the many computer applications/systems from the previous companies. This can solve y2k issues by presenting the opportunity to kick out those that depend upon legacy software or hardware.

Mark

-- Mark (aag78@dial.pipex.com), January 28, 1999.

Would it be safe to say that mergers on top of Y2K projects might be an IT departments worst nightmare?

-- Other Lisa (LisaWard2@aol.com), January 28, 1999.

Other Lisa, I agree mergers do take away resources from current Y2K projects and sometimes those mergers mean more work for current Y2K projects since one of the company's efforts are non existent. I've seen it.

Troll Maria

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), January 28, 1999.

Mergers are the WORST possible thing to affect the IT departments of BOTH companies - especially now in that they serve to take away vital resources from the y2k effort. The recent spate of First Union cock-ups, the mergers in the US Rail Industry (both still not fixed) come to mind...

Same goes for the Euro - it should have been postponed until 2001 to let the EEC catch up with y2k remediation. As a result most of the EEC (Italy, Germany, anyone?) are way behind and it looks like all countries will NOT make it over there at this late stage (less than 180 working days left.)

I think these multinationals are in an episode of the twilight zone - their managers are inept up front, but behind the scenes I'm sure they are all cashing in big time on bonuses, raises, promotions and a little insider dealing to sweeten the pot. Same old story but in the y2k context quite lethal for their survival chances.

And, of course, the workers will suffer in the end, mass layoffs - they always do. Andy 2 digits. 1 mechanism.

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), January 28, 1999.