Azzam Elder is a prominent Michigan attorney. He earned his Bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan in 1992, and three years later graduated with a Jurist Doctorate, Magna Cum Laude from Michigan State University College of Law. Azzam Elder was admitted to the Michigan Bar Association in 1995, and has since made a name for himself as a talented trial attorney and litigator.

He has also been branching out to other areas. “I have been busy working with clients on structuring Mergers & Acquisitions,” he says. Mergers and Acquisitions is a general term that refers to the consolidation of companies. A merger is when two companies combine to form a new company. An acquisition, on the other hand, is when one company purchases another, and no new company is formed.

An example of a major merger is from 1999, when JDS Fitel Inc. merged with Uniphase Corp. to create JDS Uniphase. 2004 saw the acquisition of John Hancock Financial Services by Manulife Financial Corporation. The Merger and Acquisition industry is regulated by the U.S. Securties & Exchange Commission.

Azzam Elder is especially interested in Mergers and Acquisitions as it applies to the health care industry. What follows is a brief overview of the issue.

Organizations that provide healthcare in the United States have experienced enormous changes since the 1990s, since the Patient Protection Act of 1998 to the Affordable Care Act. One of the more important trends in healthcare involves hospital consolidation. Hospital consolidations, whether they result from an acquisition or merger, create larger hospital systems with greater service reach and economies of scale to combat growing strategic, economic and regulatory pressures.

Some industry observers are predicting that in the near future, mergers and acquisitions in the healthcare industry will be even more commonplace than they are now due to these market forces. In the final analysis, the healthcare market is in the midst of unprecedented changes. Strategic, economic and regulatory realities are leading hospitals and health systems to consider integration and consolidation. The pace of transactions is gaining more and more speed, and is expected to remain strong.