One needs to define the context more that just in/out of court. From an accounting standpoint the HP/US merger was considered a reverse acquisition (surviving corporation was not the acquiring corporation). Yet in the numerous court documents since the corporate transaction it has been consistently referred to as a merger by US, USAPA, and the various Federal Judges. Both the US/HP and US/AA transactions are consistently referred to a mergers in the court documents since last December.

Of course, there's the normal conversation definition - a merger is taking two things (corporations in this case) and combining them into one. Of course, a corporate transaction doesn't have to be a merger. When Mesa bought Frontier when it was in bankruptcy, Mesa never actually combined the two operations.

Jim