  One of the generic predictions of modern cosmological models is that large
galaxies should have experienced many mergers with smaller galaxies at some
point in their past. Debris from such encounters will leave spatially distinct
substructure in the stellar haloes of nearby galaxies, detectable for a few
orbital periods after the final merger. In the case of the Milky Way, kinematic
data from surveys such as RAVE and satellite missions such as GAIA will allow
us to probe much more of the merger history, and to connect the properties of
the stellar halo with those of local dwarf galaxies. To estimate what these
programmes may discover, we review current observations of minor mergers in
nearby galaxies, and compare these with predictions from a semi-analytic model
of galaxy formation.
