M&A STORIES - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

If you listened to the press this past year you must have heard snippets about Elizabeth Holmes, the young, attractive and charismatic  CEO of Theranos, and how she fleeced rich and savvy people out of almost a billion dollars. It's a topic that Rob and Toby have been mulling over recently and particularly wondering just where in the journey did Elizabeth turn to fraudulent claims and did she...

You might remember in a previous podcast towards the end of 2021, that Robert and Toby discussed HP's disastrous acquisition of Autonomy and the huge accounting scandal that unfolded.  Well, the reality is that repercussions are still being felt more than 10 years later and there are criminal prosecutions that have resulted in a jail term for the CFO.  Added to that, a recently approved appli...

THE DASTARDLY DUO ARE BACK!!!!  Welcome to the first podcast of 2022 What do you get when you cross a project manager with a psychologist and a schizophrenic? The answer, is a very effective M&A Integration Manager, at least that's the view of the Dastardly Duo aka Robert Heaton and Toby Tester in the very first podcast of 2022. Why such a description? Well in today's podcast Robert...

Robert and Toby first decided to record this podcast when COVID forced everyone into lockdown. That was 18 months ago and the dastardly duo has recorded 62 episodes on every facet of M&A. We both have other pressures to deal with now that COVID is taking a backseat (we hope) so for the time being, this is the very last podcast - or maybe the last podcast of 2021. Who knows what 2022 will deliv...

Robert and Toby have always extolled the quality of leadership as being fundamental to M&A success and most listeners would agree that executing the right deal and developing the vision and strategy for the business are core values that you would expect from any leadership team. But what about when the deal is closed and it's time to integrate the new acquisition and turn that vision into...

Leadership is an endless topic and this time around Robert and Toby examine M&A Leadership at the CEO level.  Robert kicks off by giving two examples. #1 is a CEO who is a high-risk taker but has charmed the board, shareholders, and Wall Street with his daring acquisition strategy but is never seen to engage below the C suite level.  #2 is a CEO who has a steady and consistent relationship wit...

Leadership is one of those topics that is really hard to wrap your head around because, in Robert and Toby's opinion, Leadership isn't just the person with the grandest title at the top of the tree, Leadership is invested in many people through every facet of an organization. That is particularly true in Mergers and Acquisitions where Leadership should be demonstrated by different people...

In this latest podcast, Robert and Toby have pivoted away from M&A disaster stories and moved towards an examination of leadership? Why you might ask. Well, in all of Robert and Toby's experience, good leadership (or bad leadership for that matter) has been the instrumental factor in whether an acquisition is successful. So that got the dastardly duo thinking about what exactly defines le...

Another acquisition dissected by the dastardly duo of Toby Tester and Robert Heaton and this week it's Google's $12.5Bn acquisition of Motorola. A deal which they then sold to Lenovo less than 2 years later, for $2.9Bn. On the first examination, this looks like a disaster, but in reality, Google came out of this break-even. Why? because Motorola had $3.2Bn in cash, the sale to Lenovo off...

You might have thought that Robert and Toby would have run out of M&A disaster stories by now? Oh, Ye of little faith.  THis week we explore Sprint's majority shareholding acquisition of Nextel to try and unpack how a $35 Billion investment in 2005, resulted in a $30 Billion write-off just three years later. The deal vision made sense and there were significant economies and efficiencies...

This week Robert and Toby discuss the failed 'merger. between automotive giants Chrysler and Daimer-Benz. On paper this was supposed to be a win-win. The $36 Billion 'Merger of Equals' was supposed to raise Benz's market share in the U.S. auto market. Chrysler was supposed to improve its vehicles through Daimler-Benz' car expertise and the combined strength of Daim;er-Chry...

 A Frenchman and an American walk into a bar and over pissaladière and fried chilli chicken wings come up with the idea of working together and operating efficiently from their respective home turf to compete cost effectively with  competitors from China and Asia Pacific. What could possibly go wrong On face value, the merger of Alcatel and Lucent was a necessity to ward off serious global competi...

In today's episode Robert draws on personal experience of Oracles acquisition of Peoplesoft and subsequently J.D.Edwards. Robert was part of J.D.Edwards global leadership at the time so watched this deal evolve from the inside.  And whilst his career suffered as a result (Oracle removed the J.D.Edwards leadership team) Robert has to admire the brilliance of Ellison's strategy and executi...

Robert & Toby continue to unpack some of the worst M&A deals in corporate history and this week it's the disastrous $350 Billion merger / acquisition between AOL and Time Warner. On the surface, this 1999 deal was the stuff of dreams and it made a lot of sense in many ways BUT - This was DOT.COM era, the bubble had just burst and high speed broadband internet was rapidly replacing Tim...

Last week we asked the question Could it get any worse? Well, Toby has excelled as usual and the acquisition of Autonomy must go down in history as one of the worst, most value-destroying deals in the history of the Tech Industry and Corporate America. This story is a bit like “Air Crash Investigations”. It’s not just one factor that conspired in a complete M&A disaster, but a number. Let’s li...

In the past weeks, we've been reviewing some thew worst M&A disasters in corporate history and this week I think Toby has found one of, if not THE worst M&A disaster in corporate history. This was Royal Bank of Scotland's disastrous takeover of Dutch Bank, ABN Amro in 2007 and not only was it a massive disaster for Royal Bank of Scotland, it almost brought the UK economy to its k...

Robert and Toby continue to unpack some of the most disastrous M&A deals in corporate history. This week it's EBay's costly and disastrous acquisition of Skype. Her's the dot-points. Ebay thought it could leverage Skype to provide a voice and video channel for its customers and sellers to communicate. What they didn't do was talk to their customers, because they would have...

We continue to unpack some of history's M&A disasters and this week Toby delves into what he calls YAHOO's Murder of Flickr. This story kicks off in 2003 during the early years of the internet when Flickr was a fledgling start-up desperately needing a larger partner to accelerate the innovation and seize what could have been a massive transformational opportunity.  On paper Yahoo loo...

The recent announcement that Japan Post have finally unloaded  Toll's Global Express to Apollo Equity Partners will bring a sigh of relief in Japan Post's boardroom and a wry smile to the face of Apollo's Leadership. Better still, the appointment of Christine Holgate as Global Express' CEO is a smack in the teeth for Australia Post. Watch this space (if you will excuse the pun)...

We've set out on a quest to narrow down M&A to a set of key principles that can be expressed in one line statements. It's a work in progress, but Toby sets out an example to get the conversation started We follow this up with a conversation about that feeling of either certain confidence or get wrenching uneasiness that you might get as you review your progress in an M&A deal. So...

Toby's prediction from 6 months ago comes true as he shares the news that Westpac will use divestitures to drive a massive 21% annual savings across the business. We discuss how this will be a repeat pattern as other businesses re-focus on their core strengths and aim to build protection from post COVID experiences and also deliver stronger returns to shareholders. Robert introduces the princ...

After riding his bike up the side of a mountain, Toby's endorphins kicked in and he has proposed a great idea. You can learn more from listening to this podcast and we would welcome any contributions you might make. M&A Integration is about keeping it simple but as Einstein says  "you've got to make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler" and it's this topic...

An extended episode today as Robert and Toby are joined by special guest, Daniel Levy from Melbourne based Kidder Williams, to talk about the multi-faceted topic of compliance and the implications on the deal outcome if overlooked. Kidder Williams Providing Corporate Advisory and Investment Banking services to private and ASX-listed companies, We start off by letting Toby have a regular rant, and...

As you might expect , Robert and Toby unpack several topics in today's conversation. We kick off by asking if inspirational leaders are good for business? Not always it seems, especially if that 'inspiration' is driven by ego or is associated with excessive risk taking. And inspirational leaders can also be of little value if they only influence a small audience. Once we finish this...

 I am joined today by real life. Bonafide London trained actor, Dale Stevens   Dale has played the role of an assassin in mission possible and as a detective in blue healers, but today she prefers to use that creativity to grow influence in the people that she coaches she uses her extensive experience in theatre, film, and TV to inform her  unique approach to coaching where she emphasises the impo...