There are many different ways to handle brand integration – whether it means discarding the target’s brand in favor of your own, keeping both brands, or creating a new one. Each strategy is valid, depending on your brand equity and strategic rationale for acquisition. Let’s look at a live example: In its $2.5 billion stock-for-stock …
Category: Due Diligence and Integration
Strategy, Not Equity, Should Drive Integration
When it comes to integration, people often think equity ownership should determine their approach. If they own 100% of the business, they should change all the target’s practices to their own. In a strategic alliance where neither side can force the other side to do anything, they might not integrate any of the practices. But …
Employee Secondment: A Secret to Successful Integration
Integration is key area of concern for many involved in mergers and acquisitions. According to a survey by Deloitte, 37% of directors and 43% of CFOs named post-deal integration as their top concern. About 47% of executives believe “people problems” in M&A are more prominent now than 12 months ago. So how can we overcome …
Merger Madness: Three Tips for Success
In 2013, we saw interesting mergers & acquisitions across multiple industries, ranging from hot tech deals like Yahoo’s $1.1 billion acquisition of Tumblr to the rescue of favorite food brand Twinkies from bankruptcy by Metropolous & Co. and Apollo Global Management. While the potential synergies of the two companies are always laid out, not much is said …
Successfully Integrating Different Cultures
Cultural alignment while integrating two companies is a hot topic in the M&A world. For instance, CFO.com recently quoted Jonathan Chadwick as saying, “The number-one reason I think deals fail is because there was not an agreement or a matching of cultures.” Should you have any doubts, read about Kidder-Peabody inside of GE. Those cultures …
From Beginning to Beginning
When I am teaching M&A, I often use the phrase ‘‘from beginning to beginning.’’ I am signaling a difference from the more familiar phrase ‘‘from beginning to end,’’ which suggests that once the deal is signed, the process is over. In my experience, the end of an M&A transaction marks the beginning of a whole …
