"How do you make money? Spinoffs, split-ups, liquidations, mergers and acquisitions." - Mario Gabelli

Just sample from these with replacement sufficiently many times and you're all set. At the very least, you'll owe people so much money that they'll have a massive interest in helping you.

I've been told that Australian company Wesfarmers fanatically avoids synergies when acquiring companies so that if the time comes to cast it off, there's no painful separation of a bunch of shared systems/departments/real estate etc.

Not saying synergy is a dirty word, always. It's the assumption that there is a lot of overlap (which rarely materializes) and that assimilation or merging has no cost. In practice, company cultures are rarely aligned (the merger wasn't conjured by employees, they weren't even consulted) and frustrated talent leaves. Time is lost navel gazing.

Synergy (i.e.: cost reduction) looks great in Q3 balance sheet, but in the mean time intrinsic company value has decreased. The long term prospect isn't so great.

Oh agreed - I was at a company that was the result of two companies merging and while the reduced head count was an easy synergy (don't need two legal, HR, cyber-security etc teams), everything else was pretty slow.