In recent decades, the world economy has seen a continued movement of mergers and acquisitions, which shows an increasing trend towards concentration and centralization of capital. Although in the recent past these processes have been most pronounced in the United States and Europe, emerging markets, among which Brazil stands out, have noted the growing number of such operations, due mainly to the economic liberalization process and the social democratic consolidation they have endured. In this context, this paper aims to examine whether mergers and acquisitions in Brazil resulted effectively in greater efficiency for the resulting company and in greater benefits for its shareholders. For this purpose, a quantitative analysis of value creation and operational indicators was performed for Brazilian traded non-financial companies, which participated in a merger or acquisition between January 2005 and December 2010. The contribution of this paper is to increase understanding of this controversial and relevant topic to both the academic and the business community, and help to identify, through empirical evidence, some of the results generated by adopting this business strategy in Brazil.