The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 4,500 times in 2010. That’s about 11 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 11 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 23 posts. There were 6 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 460kb.

The busiest day of the year was March 10th with 57 views. The most popular post that day was What to do first if your company’s being acquired?.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were intelligentmergers.com, facebook.com, bunhill.city.ac.uk, en.wordpress.com, and google.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for my company is being acquired, what to do when your company is acquired, what to do if your company is acquired, when your company is acquired, and surviving m&a.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

What to do first if your company’s being acquired? September 2009
1 comment

How to tell if your company is being acquired? March 2010
1 comment

Surviving M&A Book February 2009

Writing a CV / Resume to get a job in M&A July 2010

What happens if you ARE fired or made redundant after a merger? November 2009
1 comment

On this blog, I’ve also been conducting a poll.  Granted, it is unscientific because only those who want to answer the poll have done so, some may have answered more than once (although unless they’ve been in more than one acquired company, I don’t know why they would have done this, and the poll itself should block repeated votes from the same computer) and there’s no way to determine who has answered it.  Nevertheless, with several hundred votes, it’s time to look at the results.  [Note, at any time you can go to the homepage of this blog and click on the 'view results' line on the poll.]

At this time, it looks like the following:

• 37%:  Kept old job
• 34%:  Fired / made redundant
• 21%:  Promoted
• 7%:  Demoted

What does this tell us?  Well, it’s not as bad as you might have thought if your company is targeted for acquisition by another company.

Of course, a solid one-third were fired or made redundant, which is higher than our research would indicate (which should be closer to 10-12%!), but given the fact that people visiting this blog have probably done so because they’ve had problems keeping their jobs, perhaps not surprising.  But note as well that more than 20% did better out of the acquisition than if it hadn’t occurred.  Thus, there’s room for hope…

…And I’d like to think that the ones who were promoted were the ones who had read my book when they first heard their company was being acquired.  One hopes.

If you do decide you want to leave, one of your choices is to start up your own business and work for yourself.  If you do make this decision — or are considering doing this — can I recommend that you see a new book by David Mellor:  From Crew to Captain and which you can buy from Amazon by clicking here. In David’s words, ‘The purpose of “From Crew to Captain” is to help people understand the transition from working for a big institution to working for themselves. I have made this journey, and helped many others do the same.’

David’s advice is both practical and immediately actionable.  He shows the challenges but also the rewards of the hard work of being your own boss.  Importantly, he demonstrates that you don’t need to have a tremendously creative or new idea before you launch your new business.  Most new business are not earth-shatteringly new and won’t develop into the next Apple, Microsoft or Body Shop, yet they are very rewarding for the founders nevertheless.

Do also check out David’s blog which has the headline:  ‘Welcome to the next chapter of your life’ … which is a very relevant comment for anyone in a company that has just announced a merger or acquisition, and whether you decide to stay or leave.

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.

I would like to refer anyone with such an interest to a very good article recently written for FINS of The Wall Street Journal and covered as well elsewhere (such as in Financial News). Entitled ‘The Perfect M&A Resume’, it does provide some excellent suggestions about what you should include in your CV / resume if you want to move into M&A (or even if you are already in M&A but want to switch firms).  A shorter version of the article can be found here:  ‘How to write the perfect CV for a job in M&A‘.

I am a great believer in the ‘one-page CV’ concept, which the articles above also suggest.  If you need to go to a second page, that page should be a deal sheet only of the deals you’ve worked on;  that second page should not be a continuation of the body of the CV.  In M&A, many of the deals may be confidential, but as that article suggests, you can always include the approximate size but then note the deal companies anonymously (that is, ‘Large global bank based in New York acquiring the assets of a Trust Bank in Japan’).

I also strongly agree and therefore believe that the summary at the top of the CV should be dropped.  But the information you might have had there shouldn’t be lost completely, as it can be included in the cover email (or the cover letter, if sent by post).

Remember:  no one is hired directly from their CV into this industry.  The CV is the ‘teaser’ that gets you invited into the company for interviews — from which you CAN be hired.  Therefore, keep this in mind when writing the CV.

Implication for surviving M&A deals?  It means that 2010 will also be amongst the top ten in terms of number of redundancies announced from mergers and acquisitions.  Not really a ‘top’ ten, of course, as each person fired will represent a great deal of personal, family and corporate pain.

Thus it is important to look at the previous posts here in this blog to see what can be done to minimise the chances that you will be made redundant, as many companies WILL be acquired this year!  It pays to be prepared.

In earlier blogs here and also in  the Surviving Mergers book, I have said that it is critical to take a number of steps BEFORE the acquisition takes place in order to better your chances of being retained by the new owners.  Assuming, of course, you don’t want to leave the company and have nothing to do with those new owners!

But how do you tell if your company’s being acquired?  It would be very helpful to know this in advance of the official announcements so that you can be fully prepared.

First, take all rumours seriously.  Just as some people say ‘there’s always some truth to any joke’, there may be some basis to a rumour and the gossip about your company that you hear.  If you do start to hear such rumours — even if they are flatly and emphatically denied by management (and often they HAVE to do this for legal reasons) — you should then begin preparations.

If there aren’t any rumours, you can still pick up the ‘weak signals’ that something is happening.  One of my MBA students in my Mergers & Acquisitions class told us that he noticed lots of people in the lift each morning in fancy suits going to the executive floor and that all client meetings on that floor had been cancelled (and those inside the firm were told to find meeting rooms outside the headquarters).  He said two weeks later it was announced that his company (the Royal Bank of Scotland) was launching a hostile bid for the Dutch bank, ABN AMRO.

So look for the key signals that a deal is being discussed:

• Unavailability of senior executives at functions where you would expect them to appear
• Requests for information about your work that are outside the ordinary (the bidding company may be doing due diligence on your company)
• Frequent or even consistent visits by ‘suits’ — probably investment bankers, lawyers and accountants who would be advising your senior management on the deal
• Fewer corporate announcements from the PR and Investor Relations departments (as your company may be concerned about saying anything that would affect the planned deal)
• Disappearance of key staff in accounting, HR, operations, etc.  These people may have been pulled out to work on the deal, as it isn’t just the senior managers who are working on it early on, as they need support to do the detail.
• Delays in product launches, due to management distraction or a desire to delay the launch until AFTER the deal’s been announced.  Similarly, there could even be an acceleration of product launches if management thinks this might increase the price that they can get for the company.

There are certainly other signs.  You know your company best, so you can best assess whether there’s something different — and unexplained — going on.  If you do have other suggestions, please leave them below.

Of course, sometimes — maybe usually — the announcement of an acquisition will come as a complete surprise to everyone in the target company.  This is likely to be true especially if the deal is hostile and your management will be fighting the deal.  If you only hear about it along with everyone else, then start to take preparatory steps immediately.  See our posting ‘What to do first if your company’s being acquired?’

This was an article based on the Surviving M&A book, and summarising the key points for employees who are faced with a takeover of their company.  Yet again, it is in response to the proposed firings taking place at Cadbury following the announcement that it had agreed to the acquisition by Kraft.  This particular article does discuss how it might even be possible to further your career in light of such an acquistion.

As the Cadbury union leaders said, this appeared to have been a deliberate attempt by Kraft to mislead the employees of that plant (and indeed the whole company) in order to gain further support for it’s hostile bid.  It also sends, in the words of the union, ‘the worst possible message’ to the other Cadbury employees in the UK and Ireland.  Even the British Business Secretary, Lord Mandelson, had to say “This will confirm the fears of those who felt the takeover would result in job losses.”  He went on to say that “It is for the company [Kraft] now to prove the worth of their other statements about investing in the UK.”

There’s a clear message here for Cadbury employees and certainly for the employees of any  company acquired by Kraft in the future.  But how about employees of other companies that are acquired?

I do think that it is very likely in any M&A deal that there will be changes to the post-acquisition plans once the deal is signed and even moreso after the deal is closed.  This is more likely when the deal has been hostile (as was the case in with Kraft and Cadbury), as the acquirer will not have been able to spend time with the target’s current management discussing the company and it’s existing plans.  Much will remain unknown until after the deal actually closes and the two companies try to start operating as one.

It is therefore why I have noted in my book Surviving M&A that any employee should question any statement made by management during this period.  This is not to say that management will be trying to deliberately mislead employees;  more likely is that management JUST DIDN’T KNOW.  But all the more reason to be prepared fully for the possibility of redundancy and to do whatever you can to better your chances of being retained if your entire division isn’t axed after the deal.