Most mergers are driven by the notion, sometimes wildly mistaken, that the combination will bring both a competitive advantage. Some pairs of companies, however, seem so intuitively right for one another, no bottom-line considerations should be allowed to interfere with their matrimony. Like a toddler and a sleeping cat, the interactions of these two seem inevitable.Poor Mattel, Inc., (NYSE: MAT). The company with fun as its main product has been repeatedly hammered with product recalls for lead-contaminated toys, just as the Christmas season toy stock build-up is in full swing. Santa won't be lining up this year for Mattel's lead-painted Barbies, Pixar Cars, Fisher-Price toys or "It's A Really Big World" sets. The company's supply chain needs a couple of extra links: China to Mattel to Retailer to Mattel to The Dump. Some see this as tragic, but I see an opportunity for integration.
Waste Management Inc. (NYSE: WMI) has a solid grasp on a seemingly limitless American resource: trash. From the curbside to the rapidly growing U.S. mountain ranges of disposed goods, the company thrives on our discards.So why not merge the two? Toys could come off of the ship from China already boxed in containers equipped for dumping. That way, if lead or other hazards are discovered, a phone call sends them on their way, and the company recoups a bit of its investment in waste-processing fees.
Mattel could, of course, take steps to check its own damn toys for lead before tossing them out to our nation's chew-crazy kids. But perhaps that would be too easy.
So I suggest -- if you make crap, perhaps you should buy into the crap-processing business.
Mergers I'd like to see -- Mattel (MAT) and Waste Management (WMI)
Entrepreneur's Journal: Bootstrap it like Google
Comfort Zone Investing: Can the market go higher? Definitely maybe
