Inarticulate ramblings of a management consultant

the day to day experiences of a consultant operating in weird and wonderful client situations

Tag Archive for ‘due diligence’

10 Comments

Due diligence in an emerging market – the management interviews – lots of communication, perhaps less understanding!

Last week I explored the challenges of doing diligence on a fictitious family owned business based in Indonesia, from the perspective of the CEO (the link is here if you missed it). This week, let’s have a playful look at the next stage in the process…the management interviews, again from the perspective of the CEO of the business being acquired. This is the accumulation of a number of my experiences […]

Continue Reading →

5 Comments

Due diligence in an emerging market…identifying the right channels of information, sticking to the 80% rule and managing your parent!

I’ve written this blog from the perspective of the business which is being acquired…all of the examples below are from real situations but not from the same deal. I challenge you to picture yourself in this scenario: You’re the first, professional, externally appointed CEO of a family owned manufacturing business in Indonesia. Your business has been built over 2 generations and occupies a prominent position in the sector you occupy, […]

Continue Reading →

2 Comments

Leadership in transactions – staying close but not too close!

For those of you who’ve occasionally stumbled upon my postings, you’ll know that I spend a lot of time writing about the challenges of programme leadership for the post deal integration process, with all its complexities and more importantly, opacity arising from the peculiarities of the situation; lack of access to information, business case based on assumptions which cannot be validated until the deal is completed, limited resources etc. What […]

Continue Reading →

8 Comments

Program managing post merger integration – different from other complex projects?

I’ve had a number of very heated conversations with colleagues about the nature of post merger integration in recent weeks. The two positions are easy to understand; on the one hand, there is the perspective that a deal is just another complex transformation project with all the usual challenges. On the other side of the debate, the argument goes that post merger integration represents a wholly different type of challenge […]

Continue Reading →

7 Comments

Why bother with organisational structure?

For those of you who’ve worked with me in the deals / post merger integration environment, this rant will be very familiar and i apologise for repeating myself in this forum…but I was reminded once again of this in a conversation with an old colleague. Let me take you through the way the discussion normally goes, the participants being an HR person and me in a operational due diligence and […]

Continue Reading →