April 30, 2009

Mergers and Acquisitions: Managing the Marriage


"A great marriage is not when the "perfect couple" comes together. It is when an "imperfect couple" learns to enjoy their differences."

Dave Meurer
Humorist


There are endless analogies connecting "marriages" to business "mergers" and/or "acquisitions" and as one who lived through both, I can attest to the appropriateness of their use.

For starters there is no "perfect couple", not in marriage nor in business and it is an absolute certainty that there will be differences. So by definition, if you are to succeed, you will either not only learn to "enjoy" them but to also use them to your mutual advantage.


If you've been part of a merger or acquisition, how has it gone? (Let's leave marriages for another blog.)

3 comments :

  1. I was part of a company that was acquired by another and while I may have misread things, it looked to me as though the other side approached us in the same way a conquering army would approach the country they conquered.

    If that was a "marriage" it was definitely an abusive one.

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  2. I know the feeling. At first a lot of "what do you think" quickly followed by "that's not how we do things."

    A lot of acquisitions are based on the assumption that the company being acquired has something to teach the company doing the acquiring, but in practice it doesn't appear that many of the new "parents" want to learn very much.

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  3. depending on the research, it's been said that 50-75% of mergers/acquisitions don't achieve the synergies and goals that drove the transaction in the first place.

    this simply goes to prove that the act of combining 2 different companies with 2 different cultures is much more complicated than what your average integration plan would lead you to believe.

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