A company merger makes a competing company a part of your own company. This is useful if they are currently running a service which you want access to, or if you have filled up all of the map apart from the area where the competitor lies. Also if the competitor has been buying up industries you might want to take it over so you can enjoy those industry profits.

If your own company is not very interesting and the competition looks like the way foreward, then provided you own 10% or more of the stock you can call for a chairmanship election. If you are doing a good job, then the investors in that company will vote for you, but the chairman of that company will almost certainly vote against you, so check to see how much of the stock the chairman of that company owns. If it is over 50% then you don't have a chance. If you have over 50% of a companies stock, then you can assume chairmanship at any time because you are a majority shareholder.

You need money. To merge with another company you must offer them a price at least as much as the company value. But even then, the discussion of weather to merge is made by a vote of shareholders of that company. The number of votes is each person has is determined by the number of shares they have. So if you have a large amount of personal stock in that company you will be able to vote for the merger (the computer will do this automatically for you). This means that if you can buy more than 50% of the stock of the company you wish to take over, your guaranteed to be accepted at the lowest offer price!

First of all, click on your company in the company box on the main screen. Then click the finances tab. Provided you haven't selected the "Basic" model for the stock market when you defined the difficulty settings, you should have access to an option called company merger. If you click it then you can get an option as to what company you wish to take over and then you can offer the shareholders of that company a price for which they are prepared to sell up.

Up to double the share price can be offered. If the company is you wish to take over is performing horrendously and the shareholders aren't very happy with the chairmans performance, they usually will be more happy about a merger. In order to find out what the shareholders think of the company, go back to the main screen, click on the company, click on the "Overview" tab, then click on the "Next" link at the bottom of the right hand page. Note that even offering them double the money for the share price

Once you have taken the company over, you haven't beaten the competition (unless it specificies you must be the only surviving company in the campaign scenarios.) When you take over a company you have just given a massive payout to the investors who have shares in the company. One of these investors is going to be a competitor who might use the money to set up a whole new operation in which he will own 100% of the stock which usually means there is no scope for a takeover bid.