The Complete Guide to Mergers and Acquisitions: Process Tools to Support M&A Integration at Every Level

Galpin's manual for mergers is thorough and straightforward to apply in managing an integration program. It's great as a checklist for every stage of the merger. Plenty of models and templates for meeting agendas and suchlike. It also is realistic about the human / organizational politics side of an integration, where delusion and rhetoric often get in the way of making coherent decisions.

I find myself referring to it often and have been able to use several of their tools as baseline templates for creating my own.

This thorough, detailed book focuses on the misunderstood aspects of merger and acquisition management. Timothy J. Galpin and Mark Herndon clearly have vast experience and draw on case studies to illustrate their suggestions. They provide sample surveys and integration flow charts to guide hands-on planning, and offer practical advice that you can apply in real-world situations. Not all of these ideas are new, nor do the authors claim them to be. Instead, they apply the most relevant ideas from management and psychology to M & A. The authors hammer home an extremely consistent message: You must communicate. They present their ideas clearly, even though the book is often wordy and uses a lot of passive voice (alas, business prose). Nonetheless, this is actually a very dense book and the authors are careful not to waste the reader's time. This is essential reading for virgin M & A managers, and we at getAbstract think that even experienced acquirers may find much to learn.

There is already an abundance of resources on the subject of M & A, especially those available on the WWW. If you are looking for a single-volume source, this is probably one of the best. The authors devote 14 chapters to virtually all aspects of M & A. In process, with clarity and eloquence, they explain the "Watson Wyatt Deal Flow Model" which, after appropriate modifications, can be applied to almost any organization involved in M & A negotiations, either as a buyer or as a seller. The final chapter, all by itself, is well worth the cost of the book. In it, the authors suggest various "keys" to M & A success. They then provide:Resource A: Sample Task Force CharterResource B: Integration Planning TemplateResource C: Executive Summary of Watson Wyatt Worldwide's 1998-1999 Mergers and Acquisitions SurveyWhat we have here is a single-volume in which two experts on the subject of M & A seem to share everything they know about the subject. Even if your company is not currently a buyer or seller, its senior-level executives should read this book. Why? Because you just never know. Perhaps sooner than now anticipated, your company will be courted by another...or it will be attracted to another company as a prospective acquisition. In either situation, this book (and the "Watson Wyatt Deal Flow Model" it discusses) will be invaluable.