M&A Integration Framework

This was originally posted on my LinkedIn profile, but I’m reposting it here, now that I have a “permanent” home on the web again.

TL;DR: the original 2022 presentation I gave at Paramount

I’ve been involved in mergers, acquisitions and divestitures most of my career – from my early days at Turner during the doomed AOL-Time Warner merger to Paramount’s recent acquisition of Chilevisión and Fox TeleColombia.

In 2018 I attended INSEAD’s M&As and Corporate Strategy program in Fontainebleau, France where I had the privilege to meet professors Laurence Capron and Erin Meyer and was introduced to “Managing Acquisitions: Creating Value Through Corporate Renewal” by David B. Jemison and Philippe C. Haspeslagh which began to help me answer some of my existential M&A questions:

  • Why are we doing this? (acquiring, merging or divesting an asset)
  • How does this create value?
  • How are we going to transfer these new capabilities?
  • Is there a cultural fit?

The attached framework – a mashup of my personal experiences (both good and bad,) formal INSEAD education, Jemison & Haspeslagh and help from colleagues and partners – is my first attempt at creating a pragmatic, repeatable, scalable approach to answering some of these complex questions.

Special thanks to my colleague Maybea Aguilar Peña who made an insightful contribution to the cultural aspect of the framework by introducing me to Cameron & Quinn’s “Competing Values Culture Model” – ¡muchas gracias!

Feel free to leverage anything you might find useful in the framework, send me corrections, questions, etc.