Kolodiazhna T. The impact of mergers and acquisitions of companies on competitiveness of the economy of Ukraine

In the dissertation there specified the essence of the concept “competitiveness of a country”, which is thought of as the capability of its scientific and technical resources and the implemented economic policy to ensure production of goods and services that are in demand in the market and create conditions for sustainable economic growth of a country and improvement of the standard of living of its population. There also specified the essence of the concept “concentration of an economy”, which is thought of as the degree of concentration of production volumes or provision of services by the largest national companies in relation to the country’s GDP. The logical and analytical scheme of the interdependence of processes determining a country’s competitiveness is substantiated and the main hypotheses of the scientific research are formulated: 1 – the hypothesis for the impact of M&A processes with the participation of national companies on the economic concentration in a country and its level of competitiveness; 2 – the hypothesis for the impact of integration processes with the participation of national companies through the implementation of M&A on their level of market capitalization and the level of competitiveness of a country.There developed a classification of types of M&A based on identifying the following classification criteria: directions for implementing a development strategy; relations between participants; level of involvement of participants; potential; informational openness of the process; geography of activity. The main motives of M&A are identified and their classification is proposed in the context of two groups: motives for increasing economic weight as a direction for increasing synergy; motives for increasing efficiency as a direction to achieve synergy. There also developed a classification of forms and types of capitalization and a structural and logical scheme to classify definitions of the concept “capitalization”, based on their differentiation in: 1 – the types of capitalization as a process depending on the subjects, objects, forms, and directions of its implementation; 2 – capitalization indicators and their varieties by directions and characteristics of the assessment. The following models are built: 1 – the model of impact of M&A processes on the market capitalization of companies involved, which proved that the countries of the world in which M&A processes are more intensive have a higher level of capitalization of the companies; 2 – the model of impact of companies’ capitalization on competitiveness of a country’s economy, which proved that countries whose companies have high capitalization have a high level of competitiveness of the economy; 3 – the model of impact of M&A processes on the level of concentration of countries’ economies, which proved that countries of the world whose companies are more active in M&A processes also have a more concentrated national economy; 4 – the model of impact of concentration of a country’s economy on its competitiveness, which proved that countries with a higher concentration of the economy are more competitive. Based on the models built, the research hypotheses are proved and the following scientific statements are formulated: 1 – M&A with the participation of national companies influence economic concentration in a country, which in turn determines the level of its competitiveness; 2 – integration with the participation of national companies through implementation of M&A processes increases the level of their market capitalization, thereby affecting the level of a country’s competitiveness. Keywords: competitiveness of an economy, mergers and acquisitions, integration processes, concentration, capitalization.