Thank you for downloading this programme. In this edition of the bottom line, Evan Davis and guests discuss the business of making deals.

Hello and welcome to the programme. When the world economy is booming, corporate bosses love nothing more than taking each other's companies over.

Mergers, acquisitions and takeovers saw. The evidence tends to suggest that many of the

arrangements are a complete waste of efforts and money, or are indeed positively harmful,

and when the bad times arrive, that whole deal-making culture does tend to fade.

Well, we are in a low period at the moment, but signs are things are ticking up,

so what better time to take stock

of business takeovers, whether they're made with the best of intentions or the worst.

I have three people from the world of finance and industry with me to take us through it all

and perhaps confess their mistakes. Sir George Buckley, former chief executive of the 3M group over in the US,

now back in Britain, about to be chairman of the engineering group, Smiths.

Also with me, Sir Mike Rake, chairman of the BT group, deputy chairman of Barclays,

and Juergen Meyer, managing director of Siemens in the UK and Ireland.

And gentlemen, what I thought we might do first is just get you each to describe a deal that you've done.

Maybe draw the lessons you would from it, but just let's have some examples.

Let's start with you, George.

The essence of the deal is to try to make money.

We may not always like to hear that message, but there's a return

calculation you always make, you're investing money, and you're investing money to return

money. And obviously the second thing you're trying to do is to gain some relative competitive

advantage. It might be entering into a market, getting a new brand, getting new methods of

distribution, getting new technology.

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