My father – a teacher – would get very upset when anyone suggested: “there are those who can, and then those who teach”.
Business owners should get upset when anyone says: “there are no such things as mergers – only takeovers”
Considered and well-planned mergers can bring advantage to the smaller of the two, as much as to the apparent “acquirer”.
The textbooks refer to “mergers and acquisitions” or “M&A”. In this twitter-fed and instant gratification world, we truncate that to “merger”. We ignore the “acquisition” part of the phrase. For every acquisition, there has to be a “disposal”. Unless it really is a merger. Then all sorts of stuff happen.
When two businesses are merged, it is almost impossible to get to a position where each contributes exactly 50% to the finished deal. So there has to be a trade-off somewhere, for someone. Finding that split is one of the cores to what we do. It is so rewarding to work with motivated business owners looking for a way to make 1 and 2 equal to 4 at the end of the deal, and equal to 5 soon after. The process involves an initial discovery of each business. Working with the executives as they find their way into each others’ beds holds its own excitement.