M&A Transition & Restructuring (2007-8).

In the last week of 2006 a Canadian global $150m software company acquired a US headquartered software company which was in turn half-way though acquiring and assimilating a Taiwanese based company. The acquired companies had more staff and similar revenue to the acquiring company. Stuart was tasked with project managing the integration of all three companies (excluding engineering which was managed separately) with a target completion in 15 months – very aggressive for the scale of merger.

There were strong synergies in combining the two companies:

Item                            Acquirer focus                        Acquired focus

Channel                        Retail                                        OEM

Geography                   America/EMEA                        APAC

Products                      Office Productivity                     Photo/Video

To realise these synergies required huge effort overcoming barriers in culture, time-zone, organisation, system integration and working practices. Stuart was one of the first staff on the ground in the Taiwan offices where the vast majority of the acquired companies’ staff worked. Presentations were made to all senior and middle management and their teams in groups of 6-8, explaining the reasons for the acquisition and giving a vision of the future to explain and engage them in the transition process. Much of this was done in the 3 months prior to the acquisition becoming final.

For the next 6 months Stuart coordinated the bringing together of all global teams into cohesive new organisations, making introductions, facilitating meetings, and driving department integration plans. Most of this period was spent in the Far East and a great deal of effort was expended bridging cultural divides between Canada and Taiwan/Japan.

All staffing actions were extremely closely managed, as was production of integrated financial numbers tracking costs. Comprehensive regular reports on progress and issues were provided to the Board. At the same time, Stuart personally managed all integration activities for manufacturing, customer support and facilities. The integration project was completed and signed off by Oct 2007, although some actions continued well into 2008.

Some highlights were:

• Early identification of key staff and creation of special retention plans.
• Covering loss of most of Taiwan finance department just prior to closing deal.
• Upgrading acquiring company’s Oracle systems to handle double-byte Asian characters.
• Share option schemes and aligning staff compensation plans.
• Significant global staff reduction February 2007 from both acquiring and acquired companies.
• Consolidated 3 Japanese offices into one new one, and closed many other offices across the world with minimal exit costs.
• Early visit programme by Sales to all major customers.
• Manufacturing transitioned into single global model Feb 2007, 2 months ahead of plan.
• Integrated email and calendar systems on Day 1 post acquisition finalisation.
• New IT enterprise system backup systems to allow no down-time during Far East working day.
• Cleaned and merged all financial and CRM data into single consistent systems.
• Integrated web sites and e-stores leveraging best practice per region.

This case study showed  an ability to work with highly diverse cultures while driving a highly complex global integration to successful completion within an aggressive time scale.

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