Mergers and acquisitions always means layoff from my experience. The place I work for got sold last time I worked there and they laid off my whole department. They got sold again, laid off more people and then sold again and a lot of people got re-hired. Now I just found out that this new company is buying another new company and they're already talking about redundancies. It's ridiculous. Also I was there for 3 years last time and never got a raise. I'm coming up on 1 year on this new company and I bet i still don't get a raise. The only time in my life when I got one is when I worked for Citibank and then they laid me off a month later.
Wow, that's the best news I've heard in a while!