Andrew specializes in integrating processes and systems after mergers and acquisitions.

He has been successfully delivering post-merger and post-acquisition integration since the 90’s, from the very large:

Barclays/Woolwich,
RBoS/NatWest,
THUS/YourComms

to the more modest. There is usually a “winner” and a “loser” in a merger - one organization dominates in culture, ethos, processes and systems (the “winner”) and the former employees of the other (the “loser”) feel that their identity and value has been stolen from them.

People react to this somewhere between two extremes:

Resentment and resistant to change
Seeing an opportunity to make the most of the change

The reality is that the merged organization will have a mixed bag of the two.

I strive to move the people we deal with as quickly as possible from anger, denial or depression to acceptance, then on to build a new team spirit where self-esteem is rebuilt.

This is achieved through a blend of:

Vision
Communication
Support
Rigorous disciplines

I bring two particular insights:

Team building across multiple corporate cultures
A dispassionate approach to measuring and analysing performance

Together these produce results like:

Integration post

M & A

Globalisation isn't just about companies from developed countries seeking dominance: firms in emerging markets are increasingly snapping up overseas competitors too, and despite—or, perhaps, because of—their inexperience, they seem to be better at it than we are. One reason for this is that the new operators are highly agile, willing to try new things and adapt to other cultures, and their executives are more likely than their developed-country counterparts to change their approach to mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in order to be more successful.

There is a lesson here for western firms, whose record on M&A activity is far from exemplary. Surveys have repeatedly shown that most M&As fail to create value for shareholders. The main culprit is poor integration, particularly cultural unification. Most executives concentrate on the tangible financial aspects of mergers at the expense of the all-important, intangible, people-related aspects. And that's a problem even in domestic mergers, so the difficulties are likely to be magnified considerably in deals between companies in highly disparate cultures.

See the full article here.

Thanks to “Director”, published by the Institute of Directors, for permission to reproduce this text.