Like most, I have huge respect for Damodaran. All of us have seen many "promising" acquisitions fail to meet their promise.

At the risk of having my CFA charter revoked, I would note that, while perhaps most acquisitions don't work, many do. More importantly, there are serial acquirers who have repeatedly had success with acquisitions.

For instance, SSNC has made dozens of acquisitions, generally in their niche, that have worked, it seems.

And Huntsman, particularly in the old days when Jon Huntsman was buying chemical subsidiaries of multinational oil companies at the bottom of the chemical cycle. He understood buying low.

And then in the theme of the classic conglomerate, acquiring unrelated businesses, there is Berkshire Hathaway. Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, having started by buying public equities, have bought many entire companies, now forming a conglomerate. A successful one. Maybe because they approached acquisitions as if they were investments.

Agreed that there are many, many examples in which acquisitions were "not a process that creates value". But there are meaningful outliers.