Merger Strategy Quotes

My original intent for investing into Sprint - the main strategy was to buy Sprint and T-Mobile at the same time, so we'd have a critical mass to fight against AT&T and Verizon. The U.S. government didn't accept that. They rejected it. So my fundamental strategy was broken.

What if the slowdown in merger activity isn't cyclical, but secular? What if corporations have learned the lessons of so many companies before them that the odds of a successful merger are no better than 50-50 and probably less? Is it possible that the biggest deals have already been done?

A romantic or classical view of the French approach would have been to say, 'It's a French company; let no one attack it. Let's block any merger. But the reality is Alcatel-Lucent is not a French company; it's a global company. Its main markets are China and the U.S. Its ownership is foreign; most of its managers aren't French.

You can get wrapped up in that megamerger mentality.

I propose that matchmaking should be approached like a corporate business venture. It can be risky, but I have discovered that the potential profits from acquisitions and mergers cannot be underestimated.

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.

For acquiring companies, the excitement is almost always about where they are going - that is, their strategy for gaining greater growth and productivity. But when mergers fail, it's often because no one focused on who they are - that is, their culture, which is critical to successfully bringing different groups of people together.

If you look at the history of our company, we don't do a lot of acquisition. The reason is, we need to see that people are culturally and philosophically aligned with the way that we approach the business.

The apparent strategy of Pfizer is to take over AstraZeneca, dismember it, and put the different parts of it into its three new divisions, with the ultimate aim of selling off one or more.

Whenever you look at any potential merger or acquisition, you look at the potential to create value for your shareholders.

In any merger, when you have large organisations coming together, there will be challenges in terms of culture.

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?

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.

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.

Deals are always a bit lumpy. We look at, 'Is it solving a problem for us?' And if it does, we move to acquisition.