John T. Chambers Quotes

The best thing is to go public only when you're absolutely sure that's the right move for the company. And in order to make sure that is the case, you need to have as much control over the company as possible, which means not giving up control early on.

The key to making acquisitions is being ready because you really never know when the right big one is going to come along.

I love using a targeted acquisition approach in conjunction with a business that has a clear strategy and strong organic growth.

The future, for us, is not in bold and big deals. It is in selective deals, and I prefer to focus on one accretive target worth around €2 bn. than several deals worth €200 m.

Success in M&As comes with executing with vigour along with the obvious right choices that you got to make.

Managers tend to pick a strategy that is the least likely to fail, rather then to pick a strategy that is most efficient," Said Palmer. " The pain of looking bad is worse than the gain of making the best move.

So many businesses get worried about looking like they might make a mistake, they become afraid to take any risk. Companies are set up so that people judge each other on failure. I am not going to get fired if we have a bad year. Or a bad five years. I don’t have to worry about making things look good if they’re not. I can actually set up the company to create value.

We reviewed our process at Greylock and discovered that the best investments are non-obvious enough that they result in a mixed vote by our partnership.

I like being part of a big company's executive team. It's fun to stretch other parts of my brain, considering questions like, 'How should we think of acquisitions?' I get to be privy to things that would never come up at a small company.

In business, you try to minimise risk.

Going public is 18-month process, while an acquisition is a 6-month process. Going public means going under so much scrutiny, regulatory approval, auditing, magnified 10 times. Having the stomach to do that isn't necessarily in my DNA. My DNA is building a product and a service.

The real challenge in this line of work is being able to weed the productive ones from the chaff, to decide which you're going to spend the next six to nine months turning into something that people will pay for.

China is littered with the wrecks of failed joint ventures. Investors are moving toward wholly-owned subsidiaries.

The risks of inaction are far greater than the risks of action.

The Ranbaxy acquisition doesn't preclude us from making more large acquisitions. The important issue is whether we have the management bandwidth to handle the acquisition.

I'm the CEO; I'm the one who should be looking out for risk.

Like all small-business owners, I know what it's like to take a risk on an idea, manage cash flow, navigate regulations and tax laws, and create jobs.

I never look at an acquisition really by size.

What I'm saying is it is our responsibility to exercise due diligence, to ask the tough questions, to get the evidence before we make those very costly decisions about how and when and where our military is used.

When you read that UBS did not even view parts of its mortgage portfolio as having market risk, it becomes very obvious that a number of firms were not dotting the i's and crossing the t's when it comes to risk management.

When we do acquisitions, we decide what we want. We decide what fills a hole. And if the price is too high, our alternative is the $5 billion we spend on R&D every year. We're not well-known for overpaying, because at Oracle we always have an alternative.

I think every acquisition is unique and different. The best strategy is to listen to the founders and follow their lead.

In my world, historical revenue is the least interesting thing to consider in an acquisition strategy. The goal is to acquire technology that is on your product roadmap or people that fit culturally within your organization and help you execute on your roadmap faster.

Giving up your core business in search of a phantom audience is not wise.

Managers can make themselves look strong by selling or dropping players, but if the move doesn't work, the choice looks flawed.