Mergers and Acquisitions are sometimes not as successful as the companies would like. The examples that were used in the article were Time Warner and AOL, and Daimier-Chrysler. And all of these mergers were analyzed and all were found to be lacking in the initial management decision and the ultimate decision to merge. The author looks further into mergers themselves and makes the first point that active boards are critical. He describes them as having strategic oversight, accountability, and senior-level staffing and evaluation. However, this article focuses on strategic oversight. The first example he uses was the Enron failure. He analyzed the case and realized that the board had relied far too much on the analysis of the CEO at the time, Kenneth Lay. He goes on to say that the rest of the board placed an excessive amount of trust and that too much trust can be misplaced. Further analysis showed that the votes were almost always unanimous and debates about the answers were very minimal. He goes on to say that boards cannot be passive in decision making because if they are, they are incredibly weak in oversight because going along with the CEO isn’t was governance is supposed to be. The second point the author goes on to make is that independent contrary opinions are necessary. The author goes on to say that in order for it to work, the merger itself must be challenged. Continually, he describes how to get and use independent contrary opinions. Thirdly, the author describes the role of an active board in merger success and their respective factors. The factors are strategic vision and fit, deal structure, due diligence, pre-merger planning, post-merger integration, and other external factors. To conclude the article, the author describes the role of a financial executive. By describing what they need to do in order for a merger to be successful includes