Surviving a merger: Don’t think it can’t happen to you!
[Note: further information on surviving a merger can be found in my other blog: www.survivingmergers.com]
On 7 August, Management-Issues had an article based on the final chapter of our book (Intelligent M&A: Navigating the Mergers and Acquisitions Minefield). That chapter, entitled ‘How to Survive a Merger’ provides a number of strategies and tips on how to increase your chances of being retained in a company that has just merged, acquired, or been acquired.
The Management-Issues article was also entitled ‘How to survive a merger’; it concluded with a reminder about a particularly critical point, as advised by one of their thought leaders, Patricia Soldati. She’s put together a list of the top 10 smart ways to get ahead of ‘the corporate curve ball’, as she called it. The one noted in the article (and the first of her list of ten) was: ‘Don’t think it can’t happen to you.’ Said another way, that’s why everyone’s at risk, even the high performers.
During a merger or acquisition integration, all too often the decisions about who to retain and who to make redundant are made on political grounds or with an appalling lack of due diligence and ‘intelligence gathering’ on the part of those responsible for the hire/fire decisions. Even the top performers should be concerned that they may not be part of the post-merger organisation. Or perhaps especially, as they are high profile, likely to be highly paid (at least relative to many others in the organisation), and all too often difficult to manage.
P.S. Please do check out the blog noted above (Management-Issues); when you get there, type ‘mergers’ into their search engine and you will find a number of very useful articles on M&A topics, especially in the career and talent development areas.
Intelligent Mergers 
strong noise surrounding Bank of America
imminent bid for standard chartered bank
-make a global powerhouse
-which directors would survive?
steve b
Saturday, 8 September 2007