To find out more about what's fueling all these mergers Minnesota Public Radion news talked with Mark Sirower. He's a mergers and acquisitions specialist at the Boston Consulting Group and a visiting professor at New York University's Stern School of Business. Sirower says 20 years of academic research shows that 65 percent of mergers don't create value for the aquiring company, while 35 percent do. So if the odds are against a successful merger, why do so many companies walk down the aisle? Sirower says even a bad deal might not be so bad.