Business Acquisition Quotes

The business of life is the acquisition of memories. In the end that's all there is.

Tony poured wine into each glass and handed one to Claire. “Do you remember when we had wine at the Red Wing?” Claire closed her eyes, recalling the scene from a lifetime ago, and nodded. “I do.” “I’d been watching you for years. I was so nervous that night. I thought I was planning your acquisition.” He looked into his red liquid. Her stance straightened, “If you’re using business metaphors, may I suggest hostile takeover. It’s more appropriate.

An advertising strategy is based on proper research which guides you in this entire process of customer acquisition with the help of ads.

We want to believe. Young students try to believe in older authors, constituents try to believe in their congressmen, countries try to believe in their statesmen, but they can't. Too many voices, too much scattered, illogical, ill-considered criticism. It's worse in the case of newspapers. Any rich, unprogressive old party with that particularly grasping, acquisitive form of mentality known as financial genius can own a paper that is the intellectual meat and drink of thousands of tired, hurried men, men too involved in the business of modern living to swallow anything but predigested food. For two cents the voter buys his politics, prejudices and philosophy. A year later there is a new political ring or a change in the paper's ownership, consequence: more confusion, more contradiction, a sudden inrush of new ideas, their tempering, their distillation, the reaction against them -

I suffered,I learned,I changed

Despite our policy of candor, we will discuss our activities in marketable securities only to the extent legally required. Good investment ideas are rare, valuable and subject to competitive appropriation just as good product or business acquisition ideas are.

It's worse in the case of newspapers. Any rich, unprogressive old party with that particularly grasping, acquisitive form of mentality known as financial genius can own a paper that is the intellectual meat and drink of thousands of tired, hurried men, men too involved in the business of modern living to swallow anything but predigested food." p. 201

Businesses solve problems. Businesses make the world better. There are too many problems for any one person to solve.

The world is now being dominated by few Giant organizations that influence and dectate our consuming behavior.

The commercial media … help citizens feel as if they are successful and have met these aspirations, even if they have not. They tend to neglect reality (they don't run stories about how life is hard, fame and fortune elusive, hopes disappointed) and instead celebrate idealized identities – those that, in a commodity culture, revolve around the acquisition of status, money, fame and power, or at least the illusion of these things. The media, in other words, assist the commercial culture in “need creation”, prompting consumers to want things they don't need or have never really considered wanting. And catering to these needs, largely implanted by advertisers and the corporate culture, is a very profitable business. A major part of the commercial media revolves around selling consumers images and techniques to “actualize” themselves, or offering seductive forms of escape through entertainment and spectacle. News is filtered into the mix, but actual news is not the predominant concern of the commercial media.

Use the data from the clients you already have to help you find new clients just like them. Eventually you'll be tapped into a whole market segment.

Here is an all-too-brief summary of Buffett’s approach: He looks for what he calls “franchise” companies with strong consumer brands, easily understandable businesses, robust financial health, and near-monopolies in their markets, like H & R Block, Gillette, and the Washington Post Co. Buffett likes to snap up a stock when a scandal, big loss, or other bad news passes over it like a storm cloud—as when he bought Coca-Cola soon after its disastrous rollout of “New Coke” and the market crash of 1987. He also wants to see managers who set and meet realistic goals; build their businesses from within rather than through acquisition; allocate capital wisely; and do not pay themselves hundred-million-dollar jackpots of stock options. Buffett insists on steady and sustainable growth in earnings, so the company will be worth more in the future than it is today.

The business of life is the acquisition of memories.

The business of life is the acquisition of memories. In the end that’s all there is.

I hope my message has at least jarred you into rethinking the standard and conventional approaches to living one’s life—get a good job, work hard through endless hours, and then retire in your sixties or seventies and live out your days in your so-called golden years. But I still ask you: Why wait until your health and life energy have begun to wane? Rather than just focusing on saving up for a big pot full of money that you will most likely not be able to spend in your lifetime, live your life to the fullest now: Chase memorable life experiences, give money to your kids when they can best use it, donate money to charity while you’re still alive. That’s the way to live life. Remember: In the end, the business of life is the acquisition of memories. So what are you waiting for?

Embracing data-driven decisions allows organizations to uncover valuable insights, adapt to changing market conditions, and stay ahead of the beat, ultimately increasing their chances of success and growth.

When considering the acquisition of new sources of revenue, the business must account for the costs that must be incurred prior to the acquisition, and the costs associated with the maintenance of that source of revenue.

Rapid business growth, increased downsizing, frequent reorganizations, mergers, acquisitions, and joint ventures have inadvertently increased the number of attractive employment opportunities for individuals with psychopathic personalities

Any rich, unprogressive old party with that particularly grasping, acquisitive form of mentality known as financial genius can own a paper that is the intellectual meat and drink of thousands of tired, hurried men, men too involved in the business of modern living to swallow anything but predigested food. For two cents the voter buys his politics, prejudices, and philosophy.

thought then that decent, intelligent, and experienced managers would automatically make rational business decisions. But I learned over time that isn’t so. Instead, rationality frequently wilts when the institutional imperative comes into play. For example: (1) As if governed by Newton’s First Law of Motion, an institution will resist any change in its current direction; (2) Just as work expands to fill available time, corporate projects or acquisitions will materialize to soak up available funds; (3) Any business craving of the leader, however foolish, will be quickly supported by detailed rate-of-return and strategic studies prepared by his troops; and (4) The behavior of peer companies, whether they are expanding, acquiring, setting executive compensation or whatever, will be mindlessly imitated.

Companies should embrace data-driven decision-making because it enables them to make informed decisions based on concrete evidence rather than speculation, leading to more efficient operations, better strategies, and improved competitiveness in today's data-rich business environment.

Tasks are the real-world activities people think of when planning, conducting, or recalling their day. That can mean things like brushing their teeth, preparing breakfast, reading a newspaper, taking a child to school, responding to e-mail messages, making a sales call, attending a lecture or a business meeting, having lunch with a colleague from work, helping a child with homework, coaching a soccer team, and watching a TV program. Some tasks are mundane, some complex.

I have seen the consequences of attempting to shortcut this natural process of growth often in the business world, where executives attempt to “buy” a new culture of improved productivity, quality, morale, and customer service with strong speeches, smile training, and external interventions, or through mergers, acquisitions, and friendly or unfriendly takeovers. But they ignore the low-trust climate produced by such manipulations. When these methods don’t work, they look for other Personality Ethic techniques that will—all the time ignoring and violating the natural principles and processes on which a high-trust culture is based.

I often see teams that maniacally focus on their metrics around customer acquisition and retention. This usually works well for customer acquisition, but not so well for retention. Why? For many products, metrics often describe the customer acquisition goal in enough detail to provide sufficient management guidance. In contrast, the metrics for customer retention do not provide enough color to be a complete management tool. As a result, many young companies overemphasize retention metrics and do not spend enough time going deep enough on the actual user experience. This generally results in a frantic numbers chase that does not end in a great product.

Companies should consider merger and acquisition (M&A) opportunities carefully because these strategic moves can have a significant impact on their operations and financial health. Thorough evaluation helps mitigate risks, ensure alignment with business objectives, and maximize the potential benefits, ultimately leading to successful integration and growth.

In most cases, lenders are not interested in owning the collateral itself – they are only interested in the cash value of the collateral.

Lenders want to have peace of mind when it comes to getting their money back plus profit – collateral is one thing that gives that peace of mind.

There’s a best time for everything – including the acquisition of capital.

Interest rate risk arises when there's potential for interest rates to change, impacting loan costs. It’s a serious consideration for lenders.

Your business’ debt is a lenders investment and your business’ liability is a lenders asset.

Every lender is interested in the character of their borrowers.

We all really only want to lend our money to people we can trust to pay it back. It’s the same thing with banks and other institutional lenders.

Bankers throughout time have used what we call ‘‘The Five C’s of Credit’ as a basis of evaluating the worthiness of a potential borrower.

He devoured morning shows, daytime shows, late-night talk shows, soaps, situation comedies, Lifetime Movies, hospital dramas, police series, vampire and zombie serials, the dramas of housewives from Atlanta, New Jersey, Beverly Hills and New York, the romances and quarrels of hotel-fortune princesses and self-styled shahs, the cavortings of individuals made famous by happy nudities, the fifteen minutes of fame accorded to young persons with large social media followings on account of their plastic-surgery acquisition of a third breast or their post-rib-removal figures that mimicked the impossible shape of the Mattel company’s Barbie doll, or even, more simply, their ability to catch giant carp in picturesque settings while wearing only the tiniest of string bikinis; as well as singing competitions, cooking competitions, competitions for business propositions, competitions for business apprenticeships, competitions between remote-controlled monster vehicles, fashion competitions, competitions for the affections of both bachelors and bachelorettes, baseball games, basketball games, football games, wrestling bouts, kickboxing bouts, extreme sports programming and, of course, beauty contests.

Currency risk is a consideration in international corporate lending, given fluctuating exchange rates. It represents another set of costs and risks that lenders have to consider when lending internationally.

Leaders of large businesses sometimes make huge bets in expensive mergers and acquisitions, acting on the mistaken belief that they can manage the assets of another company better than its current owners do.

Redundancies are much more predictable and transparent than theoretical opportunities to add value. My focus is always on the downside. Overly optimistic assumptions lead to the graveyard of corporate acquisitions.

My target customer will be? The problem my customer wants to solve is? My customer’s need can be solved with? Why can’t my customer solve this today? The measurable outcome my customer wants to achieve is? My primary customer acquisition tactic will be? My earliest adopter will be? I will make money (revenue) by? My primary competition will be? I will beat my competitors primarily because of? My biggest risk to financial viability is? My biggest technical or engineering risk is? What assumptions do we have that, if proven wrong, would cause this business to fail?  (Tip: include market size in this list) You should be able to look at this list and spot

Corporate lenders play a vital role in supporting economic growth by providing capital to businesses. Without corporate lenders, the ability and rate at which businesses are able to grow would likely be considerably less.

Companies should maintain accurate and timely financial records because it serves as the foundation for informed decision-making, ensures compliance with regulatory requirements, and enhances transparency, ultimately bolstering trust among stakeholders and facilitating long-term financial stability and growth. Without good records, businesses may risk financial mismanagement and uncertainty, hindering their ability to thrive in a competitive market.

The startup’s goal is to find a profitable customer acquisition strategy by spending small amounts of money in a lot of them, measuring results, and then narrowing down the best channels, while performing PDCA for continuous improvement.

Sometimes, though, people want to know more about your offer before they buy. This is common for businesses that sell more expensive stuff. If that’s you, then you’ll often get more leads to engage by advertising with a lead magnet first.

Commercial loans serve various purposes, from financing expansion and working capital to equipment acquisition and real estate investment – They’re a very important part of the capital ecosystem of the world, and of its individual nations.

The infamous Debt-To-Income ratio is the standard formula most lenders use to determine a potential borrowers capacity. Lenders calculate this by adding up a borrower’s total monthly debt payments and dividing that by the borrowers gross monthly income.

People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher—a Roosevelt, a Tolstoi, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It's the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over... We want to believe. Young students try to believe in older authors, constituents try to believe in their Congressmen, countries try to believe in their statesmen, but they can't. Too many voices, too much scattered, illogical, ill-considered criticism. It's worse in the case of newspapers. Any rich, unprogressive old party with that particularly grasping, acquisitive form of mentality known as financial genius can own a paper that is the intellectual meat and drink of thousands of tired, hurried men, men too involved in the business of modern living to swallow anything but predigested food. For two cents the voter buys his politics, prejudices, and philosophy. A year later there is a new political ring or a change in the paper's ownership, consequence: more confusion, more contradiction, a sudden inrush of new ideas, their tempering, their distillation, the reaction against them-

Why am I violent, competitive, ambitious, acquisitive? Why is there in me this constant struggle to become? Obviously, I am running away, taking flight from something through ambition, through acquisitiveness, through wanting to be a success. I am afraid of something, which is making me do all these things. I am not for the moment concerned with the fear of darkness, of public opinion, of what somebody may or may not say of me, because all that is very superficial; I am trying to find out what it is that fundamentally making me afraid, which in turn drives me to be ambitious, competitive, acquisitive, envious, thereby creating animosity and all the rest of it. First of all, it seems to me that we are very lonely people. I am very lonely, inwardly empty, and I don't like that state; I am afraid of it, so I shun it, I run away from it. The very running away creates fear, and to avoid that fear, I indulge in various kinds of action. There is obviously this emptiness in me, in you, from which the mind is escaping through action, through ambition, through the urge to be somebody, to acquire more knowledge - you know, the whole business of violence. And without running away, can the mind look at this emptiness, this extraordinary sense of loneliness, which is the ultimate expression of the self? - the self being the entity, the self-consciousness which is empty when it doesn't run.

Let me share with you an intriguing thought. The real value in setting goals is not in their achievement. The acquisition of the things you want is strictly secondary. The major reason for setting goals is to compel you to become the person it takes to achieve them. Let me explain:

Every business needs capital. Whether we’re talking about a barbershop or a bank, a boutique e-commerce store or a hotdog stand. Whether we’re talking about a restaurant or a clothing store, a giant like Walmart, or the local bodega that’s owned by a local family. They all need capital.

A persons trustworthiness in one area of life may not necessarily transfer over to their trustworthiness as a borrower. And a business that can be trusted to do the right thing for its customers may not necessarily be a business that can be trusted to do the right thing for its creditors.

Using Hollerith’s tabulators, the 1890 census was completed in one year rather than eight. It was the first major use of electrical circuits to process information, and the company that Hollerith founded became in 1924, after a series of mergers and acquisitions, the International Business Machines Corporation, or IBM.

Ya'aburnee1. As in you bury me. A rough translation for the way I want to leave this world before you because I can’t imagine having to go through a single day without you in it. If this last week was a preview of that kind of life, then I can assure you it isn’t a life worth living. You’re my wife and my best friend. The future mother of my children and the one place that truly feels like home. You’re the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with, not because you signed a contract, but because you love me enough to stay without one. “I want to be the kind of man who is worthy of a woman like you—if it’s even possible. I promise to work every damn day to make sure you don’t regret marrying someone as miserable as me. Because when I’m with you, I’m not miserable at all. You make me happy in a way that makes me afraid to blink just in case it all disappears.” The vulnerability of his words tugs at every single one of my heartstrings. “I’ll give you anything you want—anything at all—so long as you give me a chance to make you as happy as you make me. A dog. A family. A home. I want it all. These are my terms and conditions, take it or leave it because I’m not open to negotiations.” “Only you could make a proposal sound like a business acquisition and get away with it.” “Marry me,” he orders with a smile that could make me agree to just about anything.

The more trustworthy a borrower is, the greater the likelihood that they will return the money lent to them back to the lender with interest. This is why lenders of every kind and size, place a high priority on the character of potential borrowers – it is one of the five key determining factors as to the likelihood of the lender receiving their money back with interest.

Murphy’s approach to the roll-up was different. He moved slowly, developed real operational expertise, and focused on a small number of large acquisitions that he knew to be high-probability bets. Under Murphy, Capital Cities combined excellence in both operations and capital allocation to an unusual degree. As Murphy told me, “The business of business is a lot of little decisions every day mixed up with a few big decisions.

Kensi Gounden, Highly innovative new technologies can be both disruptive and transformative, but technology adoption can also be incremental, such as simply automating a manual process. So introducing business technology innovations, either incremental or step-change, may embrace increasing online connectivity across the business, strategic technology acquisition and use or using time-saving technologies to improve internal communication.

It’s ironic perhaps – but no one wants to lend money to someone or something that has no money or no monetary worth. You wouldn’t plant a seed on barren ground – you plant a seed where there’s already a wealth of resources sufficient to cultivate the seed. It could be a tiny bit of soil in a pot, or the expanse of your front yard. But you’re going to make sure the seed has enough soil to put down roots and a quality of soil that facilitates growth.

Be optimistic around the opportunity but tremendously concerned about the risks involved. This will allow you to see the opportunity as it is. Most tire-kickers spend the entire first meeting identifying why the business is a bad investment rather than identifying the opportunity as a whole. Where are the opportunities and where are the risks of this business? What would need to be true for you to grow this company to double its size? These are the questions you are asking yourself.

The third acquisition was a big single-family house. I found an architect, a small local general contractor, and we created a design for four separate units. Then I went to the bank and got loans to do the renovation. I was twenty-three, with a BA in political science. I didn’t know anything about financing. But it never crossed my mind that I might be too young to start an investment business or that I couldn’t do it. I didn’t know any better, but was able to sell the banks on my ability to get it done. Our management company took over the property, did the renovation, and rented the units. The asset did very well.

3 He seems to have regarded agriculture as the business most conducive to moral and physical health. He thought "if the leadings of the Spirit were more attended to, more people would be engaged in the sweet employment of husbandry, where labor is agreeable and healthful." He does not condemn the honest acquisition of wealth in other business free from oppression; even "merchandising," he thought, might be carried on innocently and in pure reason. Christ does not forbid the laying up of a needful support for family and friends; the command is, "Lay not up for YOURSELVES treasures on earth." From his little farm on the Rancocas he looked out with a mingled feeling of wonder and sorrow upon the hurry and unrest of the world; and especially was he pained to see luxury and extravagance overgrowing the early plainness and simplicity of his own religious society. He regarded the merely rich man with unfeigned pity. With nothing of his scorn he had all of Thoreau's commiseration, for people who went about bowed down with the weight of broad acres and great houses on their backs.

There is also another political party, who desire, through the influence of legislation and coercion, to level the world. To say the least, it is a species of robbery; to some it may appear an honorable one, but, nevertheless, it is robbery. What right has any private man to take by force the property of another? The laws of all nations would punish such a man as a thief. Would thousands of men engaged in the same business make it more honorable? . . . I shall not, here, enter into the various manners of obtaining wealth; but would merely state, that any unjust acquisition of it ought to be punished by law. Wealth is generally the representation of labour, industry, and talent. If one man is industrious, enterprising, diligent, careful, and saves property, and his children follow in his steps, and accumulate wealth; and another man is careless, prodigal, and lazy, and his children inherit his poverty, I cannot conceive upon what principles of justice, the children of the idle and profligate have a right to put their hands into the pockets of those who are diligent and careful, and rob them of their purse. Let this principle exist, and all energy and enterprise would be crushed. Men would be afraid of again accumulating, lest they should again be robbed. Industry and talent would have no stimulant, and confusion and ruin would inevitably follow. Again, if you took men's property without their consent, the natural consequence would be that they would seek to retake it the first opportunity; and this state of things would only deluge the world in blood. So that let any of these measures be carried out, even according to the most sanguine hopes of the parties, they would not only bring distress upon others, but also upon themselves; certainly they would not bring about the peace of the world.

The destruction of representative government and private capitalism of the old school was complete when Hitler came to power. He had contributed mightily to the final result by his ceaseless labors to create chaos. But when he stepped into the chancellery all the ingredients of national socialist dictatorship were there ready to his hand… The aim in which Bismarck had failed was accomplished almost at a stroke in the Weimar Constitution – the subordination of the individual states to the federal state. The old imperial state had to depend on the constituent states to provide it with a part of its funds. Now this was altered, and the central government of the republic became the great imposer and collector of taxes, paying to the states each a share. Slowly the central government absorbed the powers of the states. The problems of business groups and social groups were all brought to Berlin. The republican Reichstag, unlike its imperial predecessor, was now charged with the vast duty of managing almost every energy of the social and economic life of the republic. German states were always filled with bureaus, so that long before World War I travelers referred to the ‘bureaucratic tyrannies’ of the empire. But now the bureaus became great centralized organisms of the federal government dealing with the multitude of problems which the Reichstag as completely incapable of handling. Quickly, the actual function of governing leaked out of the parliament into the hands of the bureaucrats. The German republic became a paradise of bureaucracy on a scale which the old imperial government never knew. The state, with its powers enhanced by the acquisition of immense economic powers and those powers brought to the center of government and lodged in the executive, was slowly becoming, notwithstanding its republican appearance, a totalitarian state that was almost unlimited in its powers.

The Ten Ways to Evaluate a Market provide a back-of-the-napkin method you can use to identify the attractiveness of any potential market. Rate each of the ten factors below on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is terrible and 10 fantastic. When in doubt, be conservative in your estimate: Urgency. How badly do people want or need this right now? (Renting an old movie is low urgency; seeing the first showing of a new movie on opening night is high urgency, since it only happens once.) Market Size. How many people are purchasing things like this? (The market for underwater basket-weaving courses is very small; the market for cancer cures is massive.) Pricing Potential. What is the highest price a typical purchaser would be willing to spend for a solution? (Lollipops sell for $0.05; aircraft carriers sell for billions.) Cost of Customer Acquisition. How easy is it to acquire a new customer? On average, how much will it cost to generate a sale, in both money and effort? (Restaurants built on high-traffic interstate highways spend little to bring in new customers. Government contractors can spend millions landing major procurement deals.) Cost of Value Delivery. How much will it cost to create and deliver the value offered, in both money and effort? (Delivering files via the internet is almost free; inventing a product and building a factory costs millions.) Uniqueness of Offer. How unique is your offer versus competing offerings in the market, and how easy is it for potential competitors to copy you? (There are many hair salons but very few companies that offer private space travel.) Speed to Market. How soon can you create something to sell? (You can offer to mow a neighbor’s lawn in minutes; opening a bank can take years.) Up-front Investment. How much will you have to invest before you’re ready to sell? (To be a housekeeper, all you need is a set of inexpensive cleaning products. To mine for gold, you need millions to purchase land and excavating equipment.) Upsell Potential. Are there related secondary offers that you could also present to purchasing customers? (Customers who purchase razors need shaving cream and extra blades as well; buy a Frisbee and you won’t need another unless you lose it.) Evergreen Potential. Once the initial offer has been created, how much additional work will you have to put in in order to continue selling? (Business consulting requires ongoing work to get paid; a book can be produced once and then sold over and over as is.) When you’re done with your assessment, add up the score. If the score is 50 or below, move on to another idea—there are better places to invest your energy and resources. If the score is 75 or above, you have a very promising idea—full speed ahead. Anything between 50 and 75 has the potential to pay the bills but won’t be a home run without a huge investment of energy and resources.

On synergy: “… a term widely used in business to explain an acquisition that otherwise makes no sense.

businesses. We will not make unrelated acquisitions. We will not do unrelated joint ventures. If it doesn’t fit, we don’t do it. Period.

according to one analysis, from 2000 to 2009, the largest media conglomerates together wrote down more than $200 billion in assets. And these companies’ poor stock performance relative to indexes such as the S&P predates the business destruction precipitated by the Internet. Media companies have a history of predominantly achieving growth through acquisition, but revenue growth has not necessarily translated into better stock performance and a certain kind of market power.40

Labor and employment firm Fisher & Phillips LLP opened a Seattle office by poaching partner Davis Bae from labor and employment competitor Jackson Lewis PC. Mr. Bea, an immigration specialist, will lead the office, which also includes new partners Nick Beermann and Catharine Morisset and one other lawyer. Fisher & Phillips has 31 offices around the country. Sara Randazzo LAW Cadwalader Hires New Partner as It Looks to Represent Activist Investors By Liz Hoffman and David Benoit | 698 words One of America’s oldest corporate law firms is diving into the business of representing activist investors, betting that these agitators are going mainstream—and offer a lucrative business opportunity for advisers. Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP has hired a new partner, Richard Brand, whose biggest clients include William Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management LP, among other activist investors. Mr. Brand, 35 years old, advised Pershing Square on its campaign at Allergan Inc. last year and a board coup at Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. in 2012. He has also defended companies against activists and has worked on mergers-and-acquisitions deals. His hiring, from Kirkland & Ellis LLP, is a notable step by a major law firm to commit to representing activists, and to do so while still aiming to retain corporate clients. Founded in 1792, Cadwalader for decades has catered to big companies and banks, but going forward will also seek out work from hedge funds including Pershing Square and Sachem Head Capital Management LP, a Pershing Square spinout and another client of Mr. Brand’s. To date, few major law firms or Wall Street banks have tried to represent both corporations and activist investors, who generally take positions in companies and push for changes to drive up share prices. Most big law firms instead cater exclusively to companies, worried that lining up with activists will offend or scare off executives or create conflicts that could jeopardize future assignments. Some are dabbling in both camps. Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, for example, represented Trian Fund Management LP in its recent proxy fight at DuPont Co. and also is steering Time Warner Cable Inc.’s pending sale to Charter Communications Inc. Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP have done work for activist firm Third Point LLC. But most firms are more monogamous. Those on one end, most vocally Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, defend management, while a small band including Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP and Olshan Frome Wolosky LLP primarily represent activists. In embracing activist work, Cadwalader thinks it can serve both groups better, said Christopher Cox, chairman of the firm’s corporate group. “Traditional M&A and activism are becoming increasingly intertwined,” Mr. Cox said in an interview. “To be able to bring that perspective to the boardroom is a huge advantage. And when a threat does emerge, who’s better to defend a company than someone who’s seen it from the other side?” Mr. Cox said Cadwalader has been thinking about branching out into activism since late last year. The firm is also working with an activist fund launched earlier this year by Cadwalader’s former head of M&A, Jim Woolery, that hopes to take a friendlier stance toward companies. Mr. Cox also said he believes activism can be lucrative, pooh-poohing another reason some big law firms eschew such assignments—namely, that they don’t pay as well as, say, a large merger deal. “There is real money in activism today,” said Robert Jackson, a former lawyer at Wachtell and the U.S. Treasury Department who now teaches at Columbia University and who also notes that advising activists can generate regulatory work. “Law firms are businesses, and taking the stance that you’ll never, ever, ever represent an activist is a financial luxury that only a few firms have.” To be sure, the handful of law firms that work for both sides say they do so

Dude,” he said, adopting the modified surfer patois that binds together much of the more youthful cadre of senior management. “You can’t take me out. This place is nothing without a planning operation that understands and is dedicated to the day to day. Give me a chance to exercise my chops and demonstrate my added value. Besides, I’m no lawyer. I’m no beancounter. I’m a Wharton grad, did six years at KPMG. I was instrumental in the transaction that produced this acquisition, for chrissake. At some point we’re going to need to grow revenue, not just cut costs. That’s when what I do really kicks in.

Our three major acquisitions of recent years have all worked out exceptionally well—from both the financial and human standpoints. In all three cases, the founders were major sellers and received significant proceeds in cash—and, in all three cases, the same individuals, Jack Ringwalt, Gene Abegg and Vic Raab, have continued to run the businesses with undiminished energy and imagination which have resulted in further improvement of the fine records previously established.

A CEO To increase global presence, product mix, and market share to improve and maintain shareholder earnings and value Mergers and acquisitions Reengineering and change management International corporate leadership experience Visionary strategist; identify and pursue new growth opportunities Board member and shareholder relations management Developer of world-class teams to achieve world-class results MBA from Oxford in international business Skilled in raising capital for growth and expansion

Siebel’s business development executive admitted that all of the company’s acquisitions have failed and noted that an internal study indicated that “cultural conflicts” were the cause in every case.5

In high-productivity sales organizations, salespeople do not cause customer acquisition growth, they fulfill it.

Understandably, given public anger at bailouts, support had been gathering from both the right and the left for breaking up the largest institutions. There were also calls to reinstate the Depression-era Glass-Steagall law, which Congress had repealed in 1999. Glass-Steagall had prohibited the combination within a single firm of commercial banking (mortgage and business lending, for example) and investment banking (such as bond underwriting). The repeal of Glass-Steagall had opened the door to the creation of “financial supermarkets,” large and complex firms that offered both commercial and investment banking services. The lack of a new Glass-Steagall provision in the administration’s plan seemed to me particularly easy to defend. A Glass-Steagall–type statute would have offered little benefit during the crisis—and in fact would have prevented the acquisition of Bear Stearns by JPMorgan and of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America, steps that helped stabilize the two endangered investment banks. More importantly, most of the institutions that became emblematic of the crisis would have faced similar problems even if Glass-Steagall had remained in effect. Wachovia and Washington Mutual, by and large, got into trouble the same way banks had gotten into trouble for generations—by making bad loans. On the other hand, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers were traditional Wall Street investment firms with minimal involvement in commercial banking. Glass-Steagall would not have meaningfully changed the permissible activities of any of these firms. An exception, perhaps, was Citigroup—the banking, securities, and insurance conglomerate whose formation in 1998 had lent impetus to the repeal of Glass-Steagall. With that law still in place, Citi likely could not have become as large and complex as it did. I agreed with the administration’s decision not to revive Glass-Steagall. The decision not to propose breaking up some of the largest institutions seemed to me a closer call. The truth is that we don’t have a very good understanding of the economic benefits of size in banking. No doubt, the largest firms’ profitability is enhanced to some degree by their political influence and markets’ perception that the government will protect them from collapse, which gives them an advantage over smaller firms. And a firm’s size contributes to the risk that it poses to the financial system. But surely size also has a positive economic value—for example, in the ability of a large firm to offer a wide range of services or to operate at sufficient scale to efficiently serve global nonfinancial companies. Arbitrary limits on size would risk destroying that economic value while sending jobs and profits to foreign competitors. Moreover, the size of a financial firm is far from the only factor that determines whether it poses a systemic risk. For example, Bear Stearns, which was only a quarter the size of the firm that acquired it, JPMorgan Chase, wasn’t too big to fail; it was too interconnected to fail. And severe financial crises can occur even when most financial institutions are small.

You will find this new acquisition of mindset success-focused skills to be life-changing, allowing you to set your direction and move toward your objectives while overcoming life’s obstacles. You may also discover your ability to potentially make more money, have more time with your family, and most importantly, to build a business and career that will ignite your passion and resonate with your purpose.

set up an innovative unit called First Community Bank (FCB), the first comprehensive banking initiative to focus on inner-city markets. FCB struggled to convince mainstream managers in Bank of Boston’s retail-banking group that the usual performance metrics, such as transaction time and profitability per customer, were not appropriate for this market—which required customer education, among other things—or for a new venture that still needed investment. Mainstream managers argued that “underperforming” branches should be closed. In order to save the innovation, FCB leaders had to invent their own metrics, based on customer satisfaction and loyalty, and find creative ways to show results by clusters of branches. The venture later proved both profitable and important to the parent bank as it embarked on a series of acquisitions.

Given the specialized niche and deal size, there is scant competition in this acquisition market, enabling Essilor to purchase companies on attractive terms (such as six to seven times cash flow). This ability to systematically improve the operations of acquired businesses is rare but can create significant value.

The payments system is the heart of the financial services industry, and most people who work in banking are engaged in servicing payments. But this activity commands both low priority and low prestige within the industry. Competition between firms generally promotes innovation and change, but a bank can gain very little competitive advantage by improving its payment systems, since the customer experience is the result more of the efficiency of the system as a whole than of the efficiency of any individual bank. Incentives to speed payments are weak. Incrementally developed over several decades, the internal systems of most banks creak: it is easier, and implies less chance of short-term disruption, to add bits to what already exists than to engage in basic redesign. The interests of the leaders of the industry have been elsewhere, and banks have tended to see new technology as a means of reducing costs rather than as an opportunity to serve consumer needs more effectively. Although the USA is a global centre for financial innovation in wholesale financial markets, it is a laggard in innovation in retail banking, and while Britain scores higher, it does not score much higher. Martin Taylor, former chief executive of Barclays (who resigned in 1998, when he could not stop the rise of the trading culture at the bank), described the state of payment systems in this way: ‘the systems architecture at the typical big bank, especially if it has grown through merger and acquisition, has departed from the Palladian villa envisaged by its original designers and morphed into a gothic house of horrors, full of turrets, broken glass and uneven paving.

The same year we also acquired Financial Network Services (FNS), an Australian company with a retail banking software package called Bancs24. We needed them because some of our competitors had begun to target that market segment with their own IP. Bancs24 was a very comprehensive package and we were able to successfully win the systems integration contract for the State Bank of India (SBI) Group for implementation of core banking. Since we had invested considerable effort in customizing and strengthening it we felt acquiring FNS would be strategic for our products business. During our initial dealings with FNS and its feisty owner Tony Ward we learned to our surprise that when the product was being developed in the early 1980s TCS had deputed its programmers to Sydney to work with Tony and his team to help develop the product. Since the acquisition we have been able to deploy the FNS software package, rechristened ‘Bancs’, extensively with a number of domestic clients. Today close to 50 per cent of the banking transactions in India are processed by Bancs, thereby justifying the acquisition we made.

CEOs will gladly overpay for a company if the acquisition enables them to keep their jobs.

FOCUSING TOO MUCH ON THE NUMBERS In the second example, I managed the team to a set of numbers that did not fully capture what I wanted. I wanted a great product that customers would love with high quality and on time—in that order. Unfortunately, the metrics that I set did not capture those priorities. At a basic level, metrics are incentives. By measuring quality, features, and schedule and discussing them at every staff meeting, my people focused intensely on those metrics to the exclusion of other goals. The metrics did not describe the real goals and I distracted the team as a result. Interestingly, I see this same problem play out in many consumer Internet startups. I often see teams that maniacally focus on their metrics around customer acquisition and retention. This usually works well for customer acquisition, but not so well for retention. Why? For many products, metrics often describe the customer acquisition goal in enough detail to provide sufficient management guidance. In contrast, the metrics for customer retention do not provide enough color to be a complete management tool. As a result, many young companies overemphasize retention metrics and do not spend enough time going deep enough on the actual user experience. This generally results in a frantic numbers chase that does not end in a great product. It’s important to supplement a great product vision with a strong discipline around the metrics, but if you substitute metrics for product vision, you will not get what you want.

Established Sino-Burmese businessmen continue to remain at the helm of Myanmar's economy, where the Chinese minority have been transformed almost overnight into a garishly distinctive prosperous business community. Much of the foreign investment capital into the Burmese economy has been from Mainland Chinese investors and channeled through Burmese Chinese business networks for new startup businesses or foreign acquisitions. Many members of the Burmese Chinese business community act as agents for Mainland and overseas Chinese investors outside of Myanmar. In 1988, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) came to power, and gradually loosened the government's role in the economy, encouraging private sector growth and foreign investment. This liberalization of state's role in the economy, if slight and uneven, nonetheless gave Burmese Chinese-led businesses extra space to expand and reassert their economic clout. Today, virtually all of Myanmar's retail, wholesale and shipping firms are in Chinese hands. For example, Sein Gayha, a major Burmese retailer that began in Yangon's Chinatown in 1985, is owned by a Burmese Hakka family. Moreover, ethnic Chinese control the nations four of the five largest commercial banks, Myanmar Universal Bank, Yoma Bank, Myanmar Mayflower Bank, and the Asia Wealth Bank. Today, Myanmar's ethnic Chinese community are now at the forefront of opening up the country's economy, especially towards Mainland China as an international overseas Chinese economic outpost. The Chinese government has been very proactive in engaging with the overseas Chinese diaspora and using China's soft power to help the Burmese Chinese community stay close to their roots in order to foster business ties.[9] Much of the foreign investment from Mainland China now entering Myanmar is being channeled through overseas Chinese bamboo networks. Many members of the Burmese Chinese business community often act as agents for expatriate and overseas Chinese investors outside of Myanmar.

A word that can mean anything has lost its bite. To give content to a concept one has to draw lines, marking off what it denotes and what it does not. To begin the journey toward clarity, it is helpful to recognize that the words “strategy” and “strategic” are often sloppily used to mark decisions made by the highest-level officials. For example, in business, most mergers and acquisitions, investments in expensive new facilities, negotiations with important suppliers and customers, and overall organizational design are normally considered to be “strategic.

We select our marketable equity securities in much the same way we would evaluate a business for acquisition in its entirety. We want the business to be (1) one we can understand, (2) with favorable long-term prospects, (3) operated by honest and competent people, and (4) available at a very attractive price. We ordinarily make no attempt to buy equities for anticipated favorable stock price behavior in the short term. In fact, if their business experience continues to satisfy us, we welcome lower market prices of stocks we own as an opportunity to acquire even more of a good thing at a better price. 1977

After a partnership dispute, most of the partners will leave the alliance but not their arrogance.

In partnership disputes, most of the partners will leave the alliance but not their arrogance

More than once, Couche-Tard had doubled and even quadrupled in size, overnight. Its acquisitions both in Canada and in the United States had allowed it to develop a unique mode of operation that was simultaneously decentralized and integrated. The business had also thrived because its management team consisted of four men who had built it with their own hands—quite literally—and they had personally experienced what it’s like to run a small store, with the successes and failures that this entailed. Each setback had brought their group closer together. Each challenge had made them stronger, more efficient, more impressive.

Over the next six months, we discovered the company had been pursuing deals in an ad hoc, opportunistic way, struggling in four key areas: identifying which companies to acquire, performing due diligence on these companies, calculating their value, and integrating acquisitions into our business. Taking stock of our deficits led us to a powerful, four-step model for pursuing M&A,

To Build a Robust Pipeline . . . •​Don’t wait for bankers to knock on your door with potential deals. Instead, scour the market proactively. •​Seek out businesses that have great positions in good, high-growth industries. •​Look for bolt-on acquisitions as well as companies in good industries adjacent to yours. •​Not all perceived adjacencies are the same. If the adjacency is too far removed from your existing business, you will lose your shirt. •​Make identifying targets a day-to-day priority. •​Be patient. Nurture long-term relationships with potential acquisitions.

We created a corporate handbook that each business unit had to follow when performing due diligence on a potential acquisition.

In framing our new M&A process, we resolved to maintain a clear separation between our dealmakers and our deal-negotiators. After a business leader had cultivated a company for acquisition, he or she would turn the deal over to our corporate M&A department, which would negotiate the contract based on the results for the acquired company that our business unit would commit to delivering. Sometimes our business units disagreed with how our corporate people were handling a deal—our business leaders just wanted it done, and they had developed personal relationships with the sellers. Our corporate M&A team negotiated more dispassionately, assuring that we really didn’t overpay, even if it meant getting tough and walking away. In deal after deal, that made all the difference.

create their own OKRs for their own organization. For example, the design department might have objectives related to moving to a responsive design; the engineering department might have objectives related to improving the scalability and performance of the architecture; and the quality department might have objectives relating to the test and release automation. The problem is that the individual members of each of these functional departments are the actual members of a cross‐functional product team. The product team has business‐related objectives (for example, to reduce the customer acquisition cost, to increase the number of daily active users, or to reduce the time to onboard a new customer), but each person on the team may have their own set of objectives that cascade down through their functional manager. Imagine if the engineers were told to spend their time on re‐platforming, the designers on moving to a responsive design, and QA on retooling. While each of these may be worthy activities, the chances of solving the business problems that the cross‐functional teams were created to solve are not high.

The business of life is the acquisition of memories. In the end that's all there is.

Only you could make a proposal sound like a business acquisition and get away with it.

The six-pager can be used to explore any argument or idea you want to present to a group of people—an investment, a potential acquisition, a new product or feature, a monthly or quarterly business update, an operating plan, or even an idea on how to improve the food at the company cafeteria.

Courage. The foundation of risk-taking is courage, and in ever-changing, disrupted businesses, risk-taking is essential, innovation is vital, and true innovation occurs only when people have courage. This is true of acquisitions, investments, and capital allocations, and it particularly applies to creative decisions. Fear of failure destroys creativity

What happens if you build your business without ever thinking about your purpose? What if you’d rather focus exclusively on acquisition and higher profits? Those activities can definitely seem more rewarding. But the more we busy ourselves with work and fail to consider why we’re doing it in the first place, the more likely we are to realize (often far too late) that we’re not enjoying what we’ve worked so hard to build.

It’s much harder to piece together every investment he’s made over his career. No one talks about the dud picks, the ugly businesses, the poor acquisitions. But they’re a big part of Buffett’s story. They are the other side of tail-driven returns. At the Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting in 2013 Warren Buffett said he’s owned 400 to 500 stocks during his life and made most of his money on 10 of them. Charlie Munger followed up: “If you remove just a few of Berkshire’s top investments, its long-term track record is pretty average.

Sometimes a prosperous individual will say to me: "Any man can succeed in his ambition if he really wants to. Take you, for instance. Haven't you accomplished what you wanted to do?" And I answer: "Yes" Then I have a repentant feeling for saying that because "No" would be quite as correct. I tell him that "Yes" is only one small word of a full, honest answer: only a little part of the whole truth. I point out that I was compelled to waste about half of my life scheming and worrying over the problem of making enough money to keep going, while attempting at the same time to put aside some of it for lean years and old age, like a dog hiding a bone. This exercise of my acquisitive sense, this trying to mix business with creative ability-though it did not strangle my talent-might have done so except for fortuitous circumstances, kind and encouraging parents, limited competition, and an instinct which told me it ought not to be strangled if I could possibly help it. Or perhaps a little bird singing in a tree-top just for joy helped to give me the hint. Finally I achieved a kind of success.

Most buyers will go in aloof and reserved. They’ll shoot down ideas and inject cautionary responses at opportune times. They act like a conservative investor who must be convinced to be brought to the table, and if they do, their actions warn, it’s going to be hardball. This is not a trust but verify approach. It’s a prove it and then I’ll consider trusting you approach. There is a time to be a conservative investor during this process. This book, however, is not about how to become a conservative investor; it’s about acquisition entrepreneurship. Any acquisition will obviously include volumes of cautious investing analysis. Buying your first business is usually the largest investment you’ve ever made in your life and you will research accordingly. If there are snakes in the bushes, you will simply walk away later. The best buyers, however, understand that they too are entrepreneurs, just like the seller. The transaction will be completed within a few months after meeting the seller and then the buyer will be in the driver’s seat for the next four to forty years. Acting like an entrepreneur and not a venture capitalist during the interactions with the seller is the key to winning the seller over, getting the best deal outcome later, and behaving like the new CEO of the company—which you may or may not be, but that will be up to you and not them if you play your cards right.

I encourage you to treat this first meeting like a job interview, where you are interviewing to be the CEO of the seller’s company. Remember, having the right attitude is a critical component of the CEO mindset. It is here where it will start to move from theory to action. Be respectful and polite. Thank them for taking the time to meet with you and let them know you are interested in their opportunity. Give a history of your background, highlighting relevant accomplishments. Explain why you’re actively on the search, that you have a process, that you have taken the time to meet with banks and have arranged access to enough capital, and that you are committed to finding the right business in a certain timeframe. Compliment them by complimenting the business. Do this by highlighting a few characteristics that draw your interest to the company.

the term “merger” should be eliminated from the business vocabulary. There is no such thing. There are only acquisitions.

Our flexibility in capital allocation – our willingness to invest large sums passively in non-controlled businesses – gives us a significant advantage over companies that limit themselves to acquisitions they can operate. Woody Allen stated the general idea when he said: “The advantage of being bi-sexual is that it doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night.” Similarly, our appetite for either operating businesses or passive investments doubles our chances of finding sensible uses for our endless gusher of cash.