Archive for January, 2010
(More than) Ten Ways to Survive a Merger
The decision by Cadbury to accept Kraft’s offer has certainly stimulated interest in what’s happening to the employees there. BNET (the on-line business service from CBS) has published an article two days ago that has picked up on the advice offered by the Surviving M&A book and as also noted by the Financial Times blog a few days ago.
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.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( None so far )Surviving the Kraft acquisition of Cadbury
Very nice to see that the Financial Times has yesterday reiterated the advice from this blog and Surviving M&A book about how to survive an acquisition. The news is now that Cadbury WILL now be bought by Kraft, as the revised price of the offer has now reached a level where the board of Cadbury can no longer argue that the shareholders benefit.
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.
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Surviving M&A 