If your CEO changes, prepare yourself!
As also discussed in the IntelligentMergers blog in an entry entitled ‘What comes next? Change your CEO and (bang!) you’re acquiring another company’, when a company changes it’s CEO, there’s a very good chance that one of the first times that the new CEO will do is to initiate a strategy to acquire another company or even to merge.
You might at that point want to begin preparations as if you just heard your company’s being acquiried or making an acquisition (see the post ‘What to do first if your company’s being acquired?‘ which has some suggestions about the necessary defensive measures to take.
It’s likely that the new CEO won’t be announcing his or her planned acquisition on the first day they’re appointed, and maybe not even for several months. In fact, the research at Cass Business School’s M&A Research Centre (I’m the director there) found that you would typically have at least a half year before such a deal is announced. But better to be prepared early, and before others! You’ll want to combine it with our suggestions (in the post ‘How to tell if your company is being acquired?‘) which discuss some of the weaker signals that would indicate that you should be preparing more actively.
Surviving M&A 
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