Glenshore Perspectives

In October 2025, DoorDash dropped $3.9 billion for Deliveroo. In one move, they jumped from 30 to 40 countries across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. The logic is compelling: combine DoorDash's technology and deep capital reserves with Deliveroo's localized restaurant relationships and rider networks, and replicate in nine untapped countries the playbook that secured their US dominance by build...

In July 2025, JD.com (CEO Sandy Ran Xu) announced a €2.2 billion cash offer for Ceconomy AG (CEO Kai-Ulrich Deissner). By absorbing the company's net debt, the deal carries a total enterprise value of €4.0 billion, giving JD.com majority control of Europe's largest dedicated consumer electronics store network, spanning over 1,000 stores across 11 countries. The logic is compelling: combine JD.com...

Companies spend more than $3 trillion on acquisitions every year. Between 70% and 90% of them fail to deliver the value their buyers expected. That failure rate has held steady for decades. Clayton Christensen proposed an explanation. There are two fundamentally different types of acquisition. One buys resources to plug into existing operations. The other buys a way of operating. Each requires a d...

In 2010, Japan Airlines collapsed. It was the largest bankruptcy in Japanese history, carrying $25B in liabilities. To save it, the government called a 77-year-old retired billionaire with zero experience in the aviation industry, who also happened to be an ordained Zen priest: Kazuo Inamori. He took the role for a $0 salary, signaling to the workforce that this was an act of service, not personal...

In December 2024, Swisscom (CEO Christoph Aeschlimann) completed its €8 billion acquisition of Vodafone Italia from Vodafone Group (CEO Margherita Della Valle), merging it with its subsidiary Fastweb. The deal created Italy's largest mobile operator and its first truly converged fixed-mobile challenger at national scale. The logic is compelling: combine Fastweb's fiber network with Vodafone's most...

In 2012, George Lucas sold Lucasfilm, the production company behind Star Wars and Indiana Jones, to Disney for $4 billion. It was intended as a thoughtful succession: handing over his life's work to ensure it endured, while he retired to focus on family and philanthropy. Sequels grossed billions, Disney+ surged from The Mandalorian (2020), and Lucas's Disney shares ballooned to an estimated $7 bil...

The proposed merger between Union Pacific (CEO Jim Vena) and Norfolk Southern (CEO Mark George) promises to create the first true coast-to-coast U.S. freight railroad since the line was built in 1869. It aims to eliminate delays at interchange points like Chicago and Memphis. It would cut transit times by 24-48 hours and move freight from trucks back to rail. But there is a catch. Every major U.S....

After the champagne has popped and the wire has cleared, many business leaders discover something far more painful than a low valuation. According to Exit Planning Institute research, 75% of owners who successfully exit experience profound regret within the first year. Not because they sold for too little, but because the company they built slowly unravels under new ownership. The transaction liqu...

In September 2022, Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard faced the universal dilemma of every purpose-driven founder: how to step away from a company built over five decades without destroying the mission that defined it. Rather than pursuing a competitive auction or IPO, Chouinard transferred 98% of the company's stock to the Holdfast Collective, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting the environmental cri...

In March 2025, Alphabet (CEO Sundar Pichai) completed its $32 billion acquisition of cloud security unicorn Wiz (CEO Assaf Rappaport), the largest cybersecurity deal in history. The move is designed to transform Google Cloud into the security dashboard for every enterprise's multi-cloud and AI strategy, closing the gap with AWS and Azure. The logic is compelling: combine Google's infrastructure an...

A fatal flaw in the standard M&A playbook is the obsession with price maximization at the expense of the true engine of long-term value: culture and intangibles. In this episode of Glenshore Perspectives, we break down why selling to the highest bidder is frequently a trap for both seller and buyer. The data is stark: 70–90% of M&A deals destroy value (Harvard Business Review). The primary...