Posts tagged “brand acquisitions”

When a brand is acquired, does the product get better, worse, or stay the same? The evidence from hundreds of acquisitions shows it depends heavily on the acquirer's strategy and the category.

Innocent Drinks was acquired by Coca-Cola. Cadbury is now Mondelez. Vegemite moved from Kraft to Bega Cheese. Local and regional brands are routinely acquired by global corporations while their local identity is preserved.

Burt's Bees is owned by Clorox. Honest Tea was owned by Coca-Cola. Annie's is owned by General Mills. Most organic and natural brands are now subsidiaries of major corporations. Here is what that actually means.

Geely owns Volvo, Lotus, and a stake in Mercedes-Benz. Lenovo owns IBM's PC division. Fosun owns Club Med and Thomas Cook. Here is the full map of Chinese ownership of Western brand names.

Reebok. Forever 21. Brooks Brothers. Sports Illustrated. Elvis Presley. How did one company acquire them all? Here is how Authentic Brands Group built its licensing empire.

Circuit City, Blockbuster, Borders, Pan Am, and TWA were all acquired or absorbed before disappearing entirely. Here are 25 major brands that did not survive the acquisition process.

Rihanna owns a lingerie empire valued at over $1 billion. Ryan Reynolds built a gin brand and sold it for $610 million. Celebrity brand ownership has evolved far beyond endorsement deals into serious corporate stakes.

Amazon started in a garage. Google started in a Stanford dorm. Inditex started with a single dress shop in A Coruña. Here are 10 brands that grew from startup origins into global conglomerates owning dozens of other brands.

Marvel was bankrupt in 1996. Converse was in bankruptcy in 2001. Hostess disappeared entirely in 2012. Here are 15 brands where acquisition was the difference between survival and permanent closure.

Antitrust regulators have blocked billion-dollar deals, forced brand divestitures, and restructured entire industries. Here is how competition law shapes which brands end up in whose hands.

Instagram kept its name. Motorola lost its name under Google but regained it under Lenovo. The decision to retain or retire a brand name after acquisition is one of the most consequential in corporate strategy.

When Microsoft paid $8.5 billion for LinkedIn and Meta paid $1 billion for Instagram, they were buying brand equity. Here is what brand equity actually means and why corporations pay extraordinary sums to acquire it.

Private equity firms buy brands, restructure them, and sell for multiples of the original price. Here is exactly how the playbook works, with real examples from Reebok to Bumble Bee Foods.

Acquirers spend billions buying brands, then discontinue them. Here's why brand elimination happens, which strategic logic drives it, and what well-known examples reveal about how companies manage their portfolios.

January 2026 saw over $50 billion in M&A deals. From Clorox buying Purell to major energy and tech deals, here is every deal that matters for consumers.