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There is a joke that goes ask an accountant what one plus one makes and they will answer " what do you want it to make?" The same could be said of mergers, proposed on the grounds of the financial benefits but supported by a range of hidden motives.

Being too small, not having the infrastructure to compete, the finance director wanted a merger, the operations director wanted rid of the chief executive, the chief executive wanted a good severance package. Rumour had it the chair had given up the fight.

The top jobs went to their staff we were slotted in. It was their chief executive heading up the new organisation, it was their chair heading up the board. Their head of communications, their head of HR and their head office that was retained. That's why the merger felt more like a take over.

No redundancies, jobs for everyone who wanted to stay, salaries and conditions to be "harmonised" but not much harmony in the workforce, vacant posts remain vacant during the recruitment freeze, over work, unpaid overtime, people afraid to take their holidays in case their post was deleted or down graded in their absence, decisions imposed, concerns dismissed, uncertainty over whether your line manager would stay in view of the changes? It certainly wasn't perfect before but we never had this management bullying.

An ambitious chief executive views mergers as away of enhancing their status in an area were size matters.

One in three mergers, a cross all sectors, fail to deliver the anticipated benefits,bigger does not necessarily mean better or more efficient. Staff are usually seen as the problem as mergers are portrayed as a clash of cultures but if staff and patients "can't see the benefits " well it could be because they are't any for them.

Economies of scale and successful Trusts encouraged to take over their failing neighbours we can expect mergers to become more prevalent in an environment driven by rising demand and financial austerity.

When this happened in housing a 2012 Chartered Institute of Housing report found that cost, performance and size were not directly linked, that scale does not automatically provide efficiency and that mergers offer no guarantees of improvement.