A Modern Model of Competencies and Responsibilities
By Stephanie Snyder, Senior Partner at M&A Partners
That’s a question we get from a lot of organizations which are attempting to improve their M&A capabilities and develop their internal M&A resources. First, let’s talk about the differences between M&A Program Management and M&A Project Management. While both are essential to integration success, the roles and responsibilities of classic Program Managers and Project Managers are distinct.
Winston Churchill once cautioned, “Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it." So today we’ll take a quick look at one of the most famous M&A disasters in history as a means to keep us focused on skills and insights for future integration success. And I’d be willing to bet that in spite of all the media coverage this deal has received over the years, you’ve never heard the biggest mistake Daimler made…
Have you ever heard the phrase “put the moose on the table?” That’s a humorous way of saying it’s time for a group to finally deal with the big, hairy issue everyone’s been putting off. A consultant friend and mentor of mine has an even better way of making that same point -- “let’s get the skunk on the table.” And today, that’s exactly what we are going to do by looking at the hard, stinking truth about what happens when executives fail to provide adequate strategic directional guidance prior to launching integration.
Spin-Offs Offer Opportunities for High-Value Growth
by Jim Jeffries, Chairman, M&A Leadership Council
In the recent past, more corporations are managing their businesses as a portfolio with many moving parts rather than attempting to grow into static behemoth brands. Therefore spin-offs have become a type of divestiture that is just as strategic for high value growth as acquisitions. A spin-off is a form of divestiture that typically can generate new value by demerging current business units back to shareholders in order to operate them more independently.
What if your CEO or Chairman of the Board called you out of the blue and said, “We have to get better at M&A integration. What are the most important priority improvements we need to make to have the biggest impact on business results?”
What would you say?
“Um, I’ll get back to you on that” would probably be a career-limiting answer. So would “pat answers” about culture, communications and speed of integration. These later responses would be entirely correct, by the way, but probably wholly insufficient for the moment.
Chairman's Message
By Jim Jeffries, Chairman, M&A Leadership Council
As it is with M&A Integration, effective due diligence is both a science and an art form in today’s challenging business climate. The science of M&A due diligence has created a substantial body of knowledge around the practices of financial due diligence (income statements, balance sheets, working capital ...
One in five U.S. and UK organizations that participated in the Willis Towers Watson 2017 Cyber Risk Surveys reported that their organizations have suffered a cyber breach in the last year with 6% of those incidents having been significant, consistent with publicized recent large cyber breaches. Two thirds of U.S. companies, and just under half of UK businesses, see cybersecurity as a fundamental challenge to their organization as reflected in the priority given to cybersecurity.
While many people have participated in the acquisition of a business, fewer have participated in a carve-out, a type of divestiture where a part of a business is sold. However, as businesses move toward a portfolio-management model, where they are both acquiring new businesses and shedding loss leaders, effectively managing divestitures will become an increasingly important skill.
Everyone is talking about how A.I. is taking over knowledge-based work and rendering professionals like lawyers or even M&A experts redundant. What everyone seems to be forgetting is the evolution of manufacturing work required - from project to line production - to revolutionize productivity and ultimately enable robots to take over some tasks from humans.