Abstract: Corporate mergers and acquisitions are an important path for enterprises to enhance core competitiveness, integrate advantageous resources, and achieve strategic expansion. This paper conducted a case study on the acquisition of Ausnutria by Yili, a leading enterprise in the dairy industry. It systematically analyzed the motives behind Yili's acquisition and used financial indicator analysis to evaluate Yili's acquisition performance, aiming to provide practical inspiration for mergers and acquisitions of dairy enterprises. The research found that: firstly, the motives for Yili's acquisition of Ausnutria are to seize market share, build a global network, enhance innovation capabilities, and achieve strategic goals; secondly, after Yili's acquisition of Ausnutria, its profitability and growth capacity have improved, indicating that the acquisition has enhanced the company's economic benefits; thirdly, Yili's debt repayment capacity and operational capacity have declined, indicating that Yili's integration capacity needs to be improved and the synergistic effect of the acquisition has not been fully realized; fourthly, this paper only evaluated Yili's acquisition performance based on short-term financial data, which made it difficult to fully capture the long-term performance and strategic synergies of the acquisition, thus having certain limitations.

Key words: Yili, Ausnutria, merger and acquisition, motivation, performance, synergistic effect, infant formula milk powder, global layout