When you see a merger between two giants in a declining industry, it can look like the financial version of a couple having a baby to save a marriage.
In any merger, when you have large organisations coming together, there will be challenges in terms of culture.
Wal-Mart does not do big mergers, though it will buy much smaller competitors in so-called 'tuck-in acquisitions.'
In a literal sense, even a private company, of course, cannot do everything that it wants without some discussion with government. As a good corporate citizen, Severstal discussed the idea of a merger with Arcelor with the Russian government.
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?
We get talent and scale from mergers.
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.
Katalyst is a merger of three industries. A piece of us is connected to ad agencies. Because we get the complex overlay of the social Web, we know how to engage an audience and how to make entertainment for the social Web. And we know how to gain and activate and retain an audience. So we create social networks for brands.
We very much regret that our merger with Sprint was not allowed to proceed.
