I’ve been reading Sir Christopher Kelly’s report which is published today on the near collapse of the Co-operative Bank (Co-op) brought about (in part) by the botched takeover of Britannia Building Society. For such a large institution to have made such fundamental and catastrophic errors...
Ian Woolsey, formerly of GlencoreXstrata, has joined BTD as an Associate Director, effective 1 April 2014. With 25 years of experience in IT strategy & organisational change, ERP implementation, and post-acquisition IT integration, Ian brings with him the experiences of a CIO and Integration Director...
Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP, has called attempts by rival holding groups, Omnicom Media Group and Publicis Groupe to form a £23 bilion "merger of equals" "impossible". "They talk about this being a merger of equals, which is technically impossible. From an accounting point...
In January 2014 BTD released the results of research into leadership behaviours that influence long-term M&A performance. In the first of this series of comments, we consider the most well-recognised: Deal Fever: "The deal takes on its own dynamic. Negatives are overlooked, and so are any...
Late last month I attended the above event run by Thought Leader Global. I have been to quite a few of these and over the years have seen quite a few hot topics raised for a while only to die down as they get...
I read an article this week in Acquisitions Daily that 62% of deal makers surveyed said that a key pressure to do deals was to match their acquisitive competitors. I hope we are not returning to the bad old days but I can imagine a...
I read this interesting snippet in Business Times (BT) recently that breathlessly reported the ‘high’ percentage of emerging market deals hitting problems. This was derived from an earlier Freshfields report but the BT report is slightly more accessible. Anyway, I’m used to reading about numbers...
As economic conditions at last begin to strengthen around the globe, indicators confirm that M&A is resuming levels of activity not seen since 2007. As we've said many times before, while deals are becoming easier to complete, their ability to generate long-term value will remain...
My colleagues and I have spent much of the past month speaking at conferences, meeting acquisition and integration professionals, heads of strategy and CEOs across Europe and the US, and listening to their plans, hopes and concerns for the coming year. These discussions along with...
Carlos and I are here in Philadelphia at the Association for Corporate Growth's annual conference. This year there are over 1,000 attendees from across the M&A spectrum; deal makers, law firms, accountancy and corporate M&A executives. BTD had the privilege of being asked to conduct...