Comments

I have yet to work for a firm that has been successful on the balance sheet of recording an ROI on a merger or an acquisition that compensated for the investment in money, resources and effort. I'm sure that someone, perhaps Cisco, has been successful but it seems that precious few others have. Perhaps someone should approach Cisco to find out, M & A the Cisco way. Kind of catchy and would certainly attract an audience of interested learners.

Posted by Doug Shimada at November 29, 2004 10:11 AM

ahhhhhh..the battle still brews I between them !! Its good to note that Chivalry still exists on the playing field.. ..
sic.. for the timebeing eh ?? Way to go TP !!

Posted by /pd at November 29, 2004 11:01 AM

Doug, damn few Big Ones to be sure ... Citi and Travelers is the exception. The "Cisco Way," also practiced by Welch at GE, is to pay good money to buy modest-sized innovators whose stuff can be rolled out through Biggy's massive distribution network. Both Cisco and GE have a sound methodology for holding on to talent after the Littles are swallowed by the Bigs.(I wrote about this in my "Destruction Imperative" chapter in Re-imagine.)

Posted by tom peters at November 29, 2004 2:51 PM

Come on … I think we can all agree that Kmart’s backers, ESL and Eddie Lampert, don’t have retailing in their blood. Thus, this Kmart/Sears merger ain’t about building anything to last or taking something from good to great. It’s about building something to flip.

And the book of Tom says we live in a built to flip world.

It’s this counter-mantra that is driving the Kmart/Sears merger. That and the fact that ESL knows how to invest its money having averaged 30% returns on its investments since 1988 (stat from the WSJ.)

This Kmart/Sears merger is all about benefiting Wall Street more than benefiting Main Street. And that has this idealistic retail marketer not liking the deal.

Posted by johnmoore (from Brand Autopsy) at November 29, 2004 9:24 PM

So Tom would you still give the HP-Compaq merger the thumbs down?

Gautam

Posted by Gautam at November 30, 2004 2:05 AM

Whoa! Jim Collins trashed the deal. I very visibly and vocally supported Carly and the merger--which is rare for me. It was a bit of a Hobson's choice. HP-as-printer-company w/o Compaq, I thought, would be a disaster. The new combine is far from home free, but surely strikes me, in the real world, as a solid "least worst" alternative. One other thing, the HP-Compaq-DEC-Tandem core cultures are, at heart, pretty compatible--a rarity in giant combines.

Posted by tom peters at November 30, 2004 1:51 PM

I've witnessed several mergers and acquisitions which proved me that 2×2 is less than 4 for big compaines. When there are totally 2 different cultures and 2 complex entities, it's very obvious that merger or acquisition could not be a success. And if there are 2 big and established companies, it's certain that their cultures and their structures are very different.

Posted by Can (farketing) at December 1, 2004 2:42 PM