I would like to refer anyone with such an interest to a very good article recently written for FINS of The Wall Street Journal and covered as well elsewhere (such as in Financial News). Entitled ‘The Perfect M&A Resume’, it does provide some excellent suggestions about what you should include in your CV / resume if you want to move into M&A (or even if you are already in M&A but want to switch firms).  A shorter version of the article can be found here:  ‘How to write the perfect CV for a job in M&A‘.

I am a great believer in the ‘one-page CV’ concept, which the articles above also suggest.  If you need to go to a second page, that page should be a deal sheet only of the deals you’ve worked on;  that second page should not be a continuation of the body of the CV.  In M&A, many of the deals may be confidential, but as that article suggests, you can always include the approximate size but then note the deal companies anonymously (that is, ‘Large global bank based in New York acquiring the assets of a Trust Bank in Japan’).

I also strongly agree and therefore believe that the summary at the top of the CV should be dropped.  But the information you might have had there shouldn’t be lost completely, as it can be included in the cover email (or the cover letter, if sent by post).

Remember:  no one is hired directly from their CV into this industry.  The CV is the ‘teaser’ that gets you invited into the company for interviews — from which you CAN be hired.  Therefore, keep this in mind when writing the CV.

Implication for surviving M&A deals?  It means that 2010 will also be amongst the top ten in terms of number of redundancies announced from mergers and acquisitions.  Not really a ‘top’ ten, of course, as each person fired will represent a great deal of personal, family and corporate pain.

Thus it is important to look at the previous posts here in this blog to see what can be done to minimise the chances that you will be made redundant, as many companies WILL be acquired this year!  It pays to be prepared.

In earlier blogs here and also in  the Surviving Mergers book, I have said that it is critical to take a number of steps BEFORE the acquisition takes place in order to better your chances of being retained by the new owners.  Assuming, of course, you don’t want to leave the company and have nothing to do with those new owners!

But how do you tell if your company’s being acquired?  It would be very helpful to know this in advance of the official announcements so that you can be fully prepared.

First, take all rumours seriously.  Just as some people say ‘there’s always some truth to any joke’, there may be some basis to a rumour and the gossip about your company that you hear.  If you do start to hear such rumours — even if they are flatly and emphatically denied by management (and often they HAVE to do this for legal reasons) — you should then begin preparations.

If there aren’t any rumours, you can still pick up the ‘weak signals’ that something is happening.  One of my MBA students in my Mergers & Acquisitions class told us that he noticed lots of people in the lift each morning in fancy suits going to the executive floor and that all client meetings on that floor had been cancelled (and those inside the firm were told to find meeting rooms outside the headquarters).  He said two weeks later it was announced that his company (the Royal Bank of Scotland) was launching a hostile bid for the Dutch bank, ABN AMRO.

So look for the key signals that a deal is being discussed:

• Unavailability of senior executives at functions where you would expect them to appear
• Requests for information about your work that are outside the ordinary (the bidding company may be doing due diligence on your company)
• Frequent or even consistent visits by ‘suits’ — probably investment bankers, lawyers and accountants who would be advising your senior management on the deal
• Fewer corporate announcements from the PR and Investor Relations departments (as your company may be concerned about saying anything that would affect the planned deal)
• Disappearance of key staff in accounting, HR, operations, etc.  These people may have been pulled out to work on the deal, as it isn’t just the senior managers who are working on it early on, as they need support to do the detail.
• Delays in product launches, due to management distraction or a desire to delay the launch until AFTER the deal’s been announced.  Similarly, there could even be an acceleration of product launches if management thinks this might increase the price that they can get for the company.

There are certainly other signs.  You know your company best, so you can best assess whether there’s something different — and unexplained — going on.  If you do have other suggestions, please leave them below.

Of course, sometimes — maybe usually — the announcement of an acquisition will come as a complete surprise to everyone in the target company.  This is likely to be true especially if the deal is hostile and your management will be fighting the deal.  If you only hear about it along with everyone else, then start to take preparatory steps immediately.  See our posting ‘What to do first if your company’s being acquired?’

As the Cadbury union leaders said, this appeared to have been a deliberate attempt by Kraft to mislead the employees of that plant (and indeed the whole company) in order to gain further support for it’s hostile bid.  It also sends, in the words of the union, ‘the worst possible message’ to the other Cadbury employees in the UK and Ireland.  Even the British Business Secretary, Lord Mandelson, had to say “This will confirm the fears of those who felt the takeover would result in job losses.”  He went on to say that “It is for the company [Kraft] now to prove the worth of their other statements about investing in the UK.”

There’s a clear message here for Cadbury employees and certainly for the employees of any  company acquired by Kraft in the future.  But how about employees of other companies that are acquired?

I do think that it is very likely in any M&A deal that there will be changes to the post-acquisition plans once the deal is signed and even moreso after the deal is closed.  This is more likely when the deal has been hostile (as was the case in with Kraft and Cadbury), as the acquirer will not have been able to spend time with the target’s current management discussing the company and it’s existing plans.  Much will remain unknown until after the deal actually closes and the two companies try to start operating as one.

It is therefore why I have noted in my book Surviving M&A that any employee should question any statement made by management during this period.  This is not to say that management will be trying to deliberately mislead employees;  more likely is that management JUST DIDN’T KNOW.  But all the more reason to be prepared fully for the possibility of redundancy and to do whatever you can to better your chances of being retained if your entire division isn’t axed after the deal.

I especially appreciated the extra comments under that article that you can see if you scroll down, that do, I must admit, follow some of the further advice provided in the Surviving M&A book.  Nice to see as well that another BNET correspondent has said that the deal probably won’t be successful in the long term anyway (as up to 80% of all HOSTILE deals fail, he notes).  This is a clear message to Cadbury employees to look for ways to exit the firm before the turmoil sets in.  It’s actually a clear message to any employee in any company being acquired.

But the employees of Cadbury should certainly be worried.  On average, 10% of the workforce in an acquisition will be fired.  Sometimes it’s as high as one-third!  This, despite the assurances of Kraft that they will even keep open the planned plant closures in England that had previously been announced by Cadbury.

It was nice to see that Stefan Stern of the Financial Times included in his blog the ‘top ten tips’ for those Cadbury managers.  You can see his blog here.  The advice actually applies to ALL Cadbury employees…

As noted in one of the comments to that blog and also as I’ve written in my book, first employees should determine whether they actually want to stay, because now may be an excellent time to leave.

You can see the video here:  Cass Talks Episode 8 – Scott Moeller on how to survive if your company is going through an M&A deal

These mega deals certainly do get a lot more press, but actually your chances of being made redundant in a very large deal may just be less (percentage-wise, at least) in the short term than with smaller deals.  Most of the smaller deals will see immediate activity when the deal’s closed.  People will very quickly know whether they will be fired or retained (and some are retained for a while but will be told that they will have to leave, usually after the integration is complete).

In the larger deals, these redundancy decisions usually take longer to make and then also to implement.  At least this gives you some time to prepare — along the lines of what is discussed in the Surviving M&A book.

So, what to do if you are one of the unlucky few to leave?  (Although note the advice in the book that you might just be one of the LUCKY ones if you leave, as most mergers and acquisitions ultimately fail and the deal may be the impetus you needed anyway to move on to something better.)

There actually IS life after redundancy or being fired.  There’s a useful, short article written by an executive coach in Yorkshire saying exactly this (‘Life after redundancy‘) in which she says:  ”The good news is that people can move on after redundancy. Even better news is that only one out of all the people interviewed said that he’d have his old job back, given the chance.’  Read the article, but note that she does have several excellent suggestions, including

• Don’t rush into another job too soon. Use your time to think about what you really want and don’t want.
• If you want to do something different, go for it. Don’t be put off by re-training. It’s an experience in itself.

All very sound advice!