CVS joins the M&A unwind club
The breakup from insurance giant Aetna joins the top tier of corporate M&A failures.
CVS is joining the elite club of companies that have decided to unwind their acquisitions, specifically the $69 billion merger with Aetna. This move places CVS alongside some of the biggest corporate M&A blunders in history. The breakup of the merger, which aimed to create a combined healthcare giant through the integration of insurance and pharmacies, is considered to be as significant as the unwinding of GE's acquisition of Baker Hughes, AOL's and AT&T's Time Warner deal, as well as the mergers of Kraft and Heinz or Daimler and Chrysler.
The original plan was that merging Aetna's insurance data with CVS's extensive network of 10,000 retail pharmacies would result in cost savings and improved patient care. However, the savings were minimal, and the drug-middleman business that CVS took on, known as a pharmacy-benefit manager, became a political liability.
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