Chapter 4. The integration plan

It is no accident that this chapter comes where it does in this book. You must start thinking about integration the second you start getting serious about an acquisition. It is not something which should be left until the ink dries on the deal documentation. However well the strategy has been worked out and however well the deal has been transacted, no acquisition is ever going to be successful if there is no plan for the aftermath – or if that plan is not properly executed. This may sound perfectly obvious, but poor integration is the single biggest reason for acquisitions to fail and the reason integration is so poorly carried out is that it gets forgotten. One of the sad facts of life, still, is that corporate ...

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