Essay from the year 2008 in the subject Business economics - Marketing, Corporate Communication, CRM, Market Research, Social Media, grade: (4) good, Eötvös Loránd Tudományegytem (International PhD Program), course: Business Economics, 22 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: Within the ongoing globalisation process, many national markets and industrial branches are in different phases of the transition from local to global economic structures (Bryan, L.; Fraser, J.; Oppenheim, J. Rall, W., 2000, pp. 71-95). As a result of this development organisations in the different industries are increasingly concentrating (Brühl, V., 2003, pp. 274-278). Among other industries, also the pharmaceutical industry is highly influenced by the above mentioned trend, reflected by the increasing number of mergers and acquisitions (M&A's) in the pharmaceutical industry, which is illustrated in the following figure. Figure 1: The present assignment is going to evaluate the reasons and consequences of M&A's within the pharmaceutical industry by using the sanofi-aventis merger as an example. First of all, the recent history of sanofi-aventis is briefly described. The third part will describe the reasons and consequences of mergers and acquisitions in the pharmaceutical industry by describing the challenges the pharmaceutical branch is confronted with and the respective motives of and results from M&A activities. Finally, the major findings are summarised and conclusions will be derived. 2. History of sanofi-aventis Following the company homepage of sanofi-aventis (20071), the year 1999 has been very im-portant because of two reasons. First of all, Sanofi took over the Synthelabo Holding GmbH and changed its company name to Sanofi-Synthelabo. Furthermore, Hoechst merged with Rhône-Poulenc, a French chemical and pharmaceutical organisation in order to form the new company Aventis, with its legal seat in Strassbourgh (...)