At a time when giant busieness groups are struggling with their global acquisitions, Business Today has a cover story on a group of 10 mid-sized firms who have successfully pulled of several outbound deals. Now cut to a company like the over Rs 3,500-crore agrochemicals firm United Phosphorus Ltd (UPL). It hasn’t made any billion-dollar deals, but the 26 acquisitions (including products) it has pulled off since 1994—a decade in which going global was considered extreme rather than the norm— would easily cross that number. UPL is unlikely to figure in consultants’ case studies of bigbang acquisitions. But consider what UPL has achieved: A global footprint that covers 23 countries (which in turn allows it to address customers in 86 countries), a broad range of operations that includes agrochemicals, seeds and biotechnology and significant entry barriers in countries that it has entered. And yes, most of its buyouts are working well. Reason? UPL doesn’t wait for more than three years for...