I was at Journey 2007  (E&Y’s yearly conference for startups and VCs) last week – it was an OK conference, a good way to catch up with people I haven’t seen for a while. I did sit through one interesting panel on Mergers and Acquisitions, and heard some additional insights that I would like to add to my “Long Road to Integration” series. The points reiterate some of the points I have made before, but I thought it was worth posting them anyway – since the whole panel more or less agreed with them.

The first is that there is no such thing as a merger of equals – the larger company ACQUIREs the smaller company – and make sure you understand that before you go into the transaction. Also, the bigger size difference between the company, the greater the chance for a successful outcome.

Even though you may need to let the CEO go, make sure you keep on the 2^nd a 3^rd level management at the company. They are what keep things ticking.

Finally, since culture issues are a large culprit in the failure of an acquisition the acquiring company should appoint a SPOC.

Stumble it!

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 28th, 2007 at 10:53 am and is filed under Aquisition, Growth, Integration, Israel, M&A. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.