While sipping your favorite coffee early in the morning to jump start your day, you may have come across various headlines about corporate acquisitions while reading the newspaper or browsing news content online.

It seems that access to new developments, expansion of business, reduced costs and overhead, reduced competition and acquisition of a strong customer market base are just some of the benefits of such a business strategy.

An acquisition of a company can be affected through a merger or a consolidation. As defined by the Corporation Code of the Philippines, a merger occurs when two or more corporations merge into a single corporation which shall be one of hte constituent corporations, while a consolidation occurs when two or more corporations consolidate into a single corporation which shall be the consolidated corporation.

'De facto merger' - does it ring a bell?