mergers & acquisitions (more on best practices)

The last post ended with "...the crop of the world's largest enterprise have no strategy and are aspiring to be followers" (See that one for more)

But no company can live with that!

Surely they have something along the lines of "we shall be number one" or "we will win" or "we will be the biggest and greatest and leave every competitor in the gutter" in their strategy papers...

...or at least that is what can be heard murmured among the top brass occasionally.

So what to do when you do not want to be different from your competition?

Gobble, gobble, gobble...

If you cannot beat them, buy them, eat'em, devour, wolf'em down.

Buy number one and become number one, buy number three, four, five, six... and become number one. Buy everything in sight, buy, buy, buy.

Ever seen that out there?

Now you know why ;)

Comments

[cambkey]

I used to work for a company that applied the very same strategy: In 3 years it acquired 18 businesses in different european countries buying the number ones and twos in each.

Within 2 years the brands had disappeared, the majority of the people had left and the customers had gone too.

Within a further 2 years those people set up new companies and new brands, gained new customers and were back at number one and two!

[Ric]

Now you're scaring me SIg - this is my life I see flashing before me in your posts ... I haven't just SEEN that out there, I'm (indirectly) part of it.

[sig]

Hehe, yep, scary is it not? And kind of dumb too...

I was soooo tempted to mention certain big enterprise software guys (#2 :), doing more or less the same in more or less the same way as #1. Now they've vacuumed the market for #3s, #4s etc... so time to fire up the engines and do to them what happened with cambkey's former employer! And why not take on # 1 too I wonder when we're at it... hmm... :)

[Ric]

You're thinking Oracle, and I'm thinking Pernod Ricard ... same deal: the strategy is "engulf and devour" (I think that comes from Mel Brooks' "Silent Movie") rather than innovate. I am currently working at the intersection of the two ...