Ajay Piramal Quotes

Multiple mergers can be challenging because people come from different backgrounds.

In any merger, the biggest challenge is always integration of human resources because the people who are coming in have a lot of apprehension.

Usually, the first three months post acquisition are up and down. The acquirer and the acquiree are trying to figure out how to interact. The founders of the acquiree are usually tired from the deal process and adjusting to their new reality.

I know a lot of companies that have a very well defined post-acquisition process. However, many of them don't take into consideration the dynamics and personalities of the acquiree. Instead, they assume that everyone will happily be assimilated.

I've been through a couple of mergers - they're not that fun. And it's easy to lose your focus on this grandiose mission you established for yourself as an independent company.

Mergers are like marriages. They are the bringing together of two individuals. If you wouldn't marry someone for the 'operational efficiencies' they offer in the running of a household, then why would you combine two companies with unique cultures and identities for that reason?

A merger is hard to pull off under any circumstances. It's harder when everybody is against you.

You can't merge six banks and think that nothing will happen.

Size is the enemy of excellence in investment banking, particularly when you are trying to put together two different cultures.

Avoiding the all-too-typical divisive trappings of a takeover and creating instead a shared transnational culture - this is one of the most important lessons learned from combining Fiat and Chrysler to create FCA.

Let's be honest: the implementation of the United and Continental merger has been rocky for customers and employees.

A restructuring of an organisation is always a difficult time and delicate.

I'm not anti-Muslim, I'm not anti-immigration; I'm saying we've got big problems in our cities. It's not very smart to make the problem bigger by letting in millions more immigrants from rural Muslim cultures that don't assimilate.

At Travelers, we were much more opportunistic. It was very successful, but it wasn't an integrated financial services company. We had a property casualty company, a life company, a brokerage company. We were a financial conglomerate. It wasn't a unified, coordinated strategy of any sort. When it merged with Citi, that became a big issue; Citi, at that time, wasn't yet a fully integrated, coordinated company.

My own daughters weren't able to study in Turkey because of their headscarves, so they went to the United States.

I don't have a problem with people from Slovakia and Lithuania. But I do have a problem with immigration from Islamic countries.

The difference of language, dress, and manners . . . severs and alienates the nations of the globe.

Every big company has some little guy who is an enthusiast off in the corner working on technology. In Japan, it is integrated into their high-level strategy. They see it as a communication medium, because for them, just the words  -  and this is the problem that they have with Americans  -  just the words they say to you is not the complete message. Their facial expressions, their body language, there is a lot of context. Also, their written language doesn't translate to keyboards well.

Revitalizing General Motors is like teaching an elephant to tap dance. You find the sensitive spot and start poking.

I'm opposed to wearing headscarves in public places. That's not France. There's something I just don't understand: the people who come to France, why would they want to change France, to live in France the same way they lived back home?

While learning the language in France a young man's morals, health and fortune are more irresistibly endangered than in any country of the universe.

To me it's very obvious there are huge cultural differences between Americans and Canadians. But a lot of what we are is American.

Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion.

Parisian men make love all day and have no time to work; American men work all day and have no time for love.

When I look around the world and see so many countries turning people away, I think it is terrible. And I know that these are all issues that Germany is culturally dealing with in terms of integration but it is just something that I deeply admire.