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Previous studies on M&amp;A mainly paid attention to the potential gains from a merger, while ignored the problem of how to select the partners to merge. This paper aims to select the best partner from different candidates for a given company to merge.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Design\/methodology\/approach<\/jats:title><jats:p>Each company's historical data are used to identify each company's own production technology. With resources change, each company's new operation is restricted by its own production technology. Then, a 0\u20131 integer programming is proposed to select the best partner for M&amp;A.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Findings<\/jats:title><jats:p>The banking industry involving 27 China's commercial banks is given to verify the applicability of our proposed model. The study shows the best partner selection for each bank company.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec><jats:sec><jats:title content-type=\"abstract-subheading\">Originality\/value<\/jats:title><jats:p>On the theoretical side, the study uses each company's own historical data to construct its own production technology to compressively reflect the production change after M&amp;A. On the practical side, the study uses the proposed model to help the 27 commercial banks in China to select their best merger partner.<\/jats:p><\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1108\/imds-12-2019-0640","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2020,4,22]],"date-time":"2020-04-22T15:49:02Z","timestamp":1587570542000},"page":"879-893","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":13,"title":["Data-driven approach to find the best partner for merger and acquisitions in banking 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