M&A SR

Stakes at play

Two out of every three M&As do not achieve the goals set out at the transaction stage and end up damaging the business’s economic and social value over the long term.

Why?

• Underestimation of risk related to the human factor.
• Over emphasis of economic considerations and concomitant absence of any plans for the preservation of employment or for the management of impacts on the community at large.
• Underestimation of efforts required to bring about the change.
• Lack of understanding about cultural matters.
• Partitioning of tasks and of people involved leading to fragmentation of the project.
• Insufficient capitalisation on experience and knowhow accumulated from one deal to the next.

Principles

• Adoption of a systemic approach based on a set of components aimed at mitigating risk: economic, social and societal aspects of each transaction.
• Taking stakeholder expectations into account from the initial stages in order to limit the risk of objection to integration plans.
• Aligning HR strategies and objectives to those set out by the company.
• Uninterrupted transaction management to ensure seamless processing and thereby achieve better consistency throughout the process and enhance performance.