What is meant by Mergers and Acquisitions? This is a general term used to refer to the #amalgamation of companies. A merger is a combination of two companies to form a new company, while an acquisition is the purchase of one company by another in which no new company is formed. Mergers and acquisitions refers to the buying, selling and combining of different companies to aid a company in a specific industry to grow quickly without having to create another business entity. Growth due to Internal and #External Expansion: A  business might grow either by #internal expansion or by external expansion. In the case of internal expansion, a firm grows progressively through procurement of new #assets, substitution of the technologically out-dated equipments and the setting up of new product line. But in external expansion, a firm secures a running business and grows overnight through corporate combinations. These combinations are in the form of mergers, acquisitions, amalgamations and takeovers and have now become important features of #corporate restructuring. Why Mergers & Acquisitions: Mergers and acquisitions are strategic decisions taken for boosting up company’s growth by augmenting its production and marketing operations. One of the main reasons that companies opt for a merger or acquisition is that, by conjoining business undertakings, performance will increase and costs will decrease. Essentially, a business will attempt to merge with another business that has complementary #strengths and weaknesses. Many M&A deals allow the #bidder to thrash future competition and gain a larger market share in its product’s market. Mergers or amalgamations may take two forms:- #Merger through Absorption:- An absorption is a combination of two or more companies into an ‘existing company’. All companies except one lose their identity in such a merger. Example: 1999 merger of Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham, both firms ceased to exist and a new firm GlaxoSmithKline was created. #Merger through Consolidation:– A consolidation is a combination of two or more companies into a ‘new company’. In this form of merger, all companies are legally dissolved and a new entity is created. Here, the acquired company transfers its assets, #liabilities and shares to the acquiring company for cash or exchange of shares. A fundamental characteristic of merger is that the acquiring company (existing or new) assumes the #ownership of other companies and combines their operations with its own operations. Reverse Merger Is a deal facilitating a private company to become a public company. The deal enables private company by listing in a short time period. Occurs when a private company has strong prospects and is eager to raise financing, buys a publicly listed shell company. Usually the public one is one with, no business and limited assets Acquisitions and Takeovers #Reverse Takeover Acquisition usually refers to purchase of smaller firm by larger firm Sometimes, smaller firm acquire #management control of a larger / longer established company Keep its name for combined entity Friendly Acquisition Companies accomodate in negotiations Identical to merger of equals Cognizant to Acquire TriZetto, creating a fully-integrated healthcare technology and operations leadership. With more than $3 billion in combined healthcare revenue, Cognizant and TriZetto will serve nearly 245,000 healthcare providers. Hostile Acquisition Takeover target reluctant to be purchased If the #acquiree company has no prior knowledge of offer Hostile takeovers do turn friendly most of the times. Offer is usually upgraded for smooth acquisitions Benefits of Mergers and Acquisitions Greater Value Generation Generate Cost Efficiency #Economies of Scale Increase in Market Share Gain higher...

Best Leadership Quotes  “Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men — the other 999 follow women. Groucho Marx The Leader In You – #Dale Carnegie “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality. – Warren Bennis Developing the Leader Within You – “You don’t lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case. – Ken Kesey Awaken the Leader in You – Mitesh Khatri “No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it.– Andrew Carnegie How To Win Friends Influence People – “Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it’s amazing what they can accomplish. – Sam Walton The Leader in You – Peter Miller “To lead people, walk behind them.” – Lao Tzu “The best leader is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and the self-restraint to keep from meddling with them while they do it – Theodore Roosevelt “The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly– Jim Rohn “Leadership is a potent combination of #strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy – Norman Schwarzkopf “Successful leaders see the opportunities in every difficulty rather than the difficulty in every opportunity – Reed Markham “The problem with being a leader is that you’re never sure if you’re being followed or chased – Claire A. Murray “Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail – Harold R. McAlindon “Learn to see things backwards, inside out, and upside down – John Heider, Tao of Leadership “The real leader has no need to lead- he is content to point the way. #Henry Miller “A leader is a dealer in hope – Napoleon Bonaparte From Manager to Leader “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader – John Quincy Adams “The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes – #Tony Blair “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity – George Patton “Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise – Woodrow Wilson “Take time to deliberate; but when the time for action arrives, stop thinking and go in – Andrew Jackson “To be a great leader and so always master of the situation, one must of necessity have been a great thinker in action. An eagle was never yet hatched from a goose’s egg – James Thomas “A good general not only sees the way to victory; he also knows when victory is impossible – Polybius “Leadership is being the first egg in the omelet – Jarod Kintz “Leadership consists of nothing but taking responsibility for everything that goes wrong and giving your subordinates credit for everything that goes well – Dwight D. Eisenhower “##management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things –  Peter F. Drucker...

Strategic Leadership in Organizations Every person is bestowed with innumerable opportunities through-out his/her life time. Very few are able to identify those angelistic gateways to success; I don’t agree with the age-old saying “Opportunity knocks the door only once.” In this dynamic world we are in a position to create opportunities and build our businesses around to witness our dreams turning into reality. What is strategic leadership? Have you got the spark in you? What started as a small spark of starting an online book store has instigated Sachin and Binny Bansal to build the top most online retail selling platform Flipkart. Bharat Matrimony founder Murugavel Janakiraman identified the unexplored niche of prospective marriage alliances over the internet by creating an online portal which facilitated girls and boys to project their profiles suitably and search for the man or woman of their dreams with ease minus embarrassment. A spark or an idea is what is needed to get into the groove to achieve something that delivers value not only to the creator but to the public over a period of time. Strategic leaders are not born, they are definitely made; they learn from their mistakes, have an eye for chances, molded by the environment they are exposed to and groom themselves to adapt to the setting. What is Strategic Leadership? Strategic leadership provides the vision and direction for the growth and success of an organization. A strategic leader institutionalizes a vision and helps the members of the organization to learn how to convert the objectives into action. A strategic leader also helps to sustain the momentum and interest of the people working under him by exuding the passion towards accomplishing the objectives in the long run. Organizations steered by strategic leaders are more successful in learning, both at the individual and group levels. Both the administrative and visionary traits of leadership are essential for organization-wide learning initiatives to succeed. The organization always needs to learn new things and at the same time, to systematize newly discovered approaches of learning. Strategic leaders believe human capital as an important factor in innovation and the creation of core competencies, and they invest considerable effort sustaining the health of this resource. These leaders attach consideration in building their organization’s resources, capabilities and competencies in order to gain appropriate, sustained competitive advantages. Strategic leaders very well know that focusing on the short term and forgetting about core competencies in the face of changing circumstances will prove to deliver disastrous results. Top Ten Characteristics of a Strategic Leader: Mission focusedAbility to see the big pictureCapable of matching organization’s objectives with the changing environmentCreative approach to problem solvingFuturistic thinkingEmotionally IntelligentBuild a strong team of capable peopleClear about their choicesCombine analytical vigor with serendipityExcellent communicators 3 Key Responsibilities of Strategic Leadership Take Responsibility for Vision, Alignment and DeploymentCreate a Culture of EmpowermentBuild...

Why Strategic Plans Fail What are Strategic Action Plans? Action plans refer to definite actions that are related to either short- or longer-term strategic goals. Action plans should include details of resource commitments, allocation and time horizons for accomplishment. Action plan development represents the key stage in planning that facilitates effective communication of plans throughout the organization followed by resource planning and deployment. Action plans are also referred to as projects, strategies, tactics, or initiatives. Plans in paper may look more creative and feasible in nature; in reality it is a big quest unanswered. Are executives showing the same kind of enthusiasm in giving shape to the plans they charted out in paper? Most plans fail or do not give the expected optimum results and the reasons attributed may be listed out as follows: 1. Authority is delegated but Responsibility is forgotten: Senior management executives are the STRATEGIC DECISION-BRAHMAS obviously but do they demonstrate what needs to be done?  Demonstration is one of the powerful forms of communication and if the strategies are only to be communicated down the line and not to be followed by the senior officials how do you expect your team to perform efficiently? 2. Confusion between strategy and Ideas: An idea is a conceptual construct about a particular thing. It is more abstract in nature. But when it comes to strategy, you need to have a solid FUTURISTIC action plan that is bound to give you the desired results in the long term. The elements essential for a good action plan are: Availability of Resources (Men, Material and Money)Efficient Resource Allocation to the various Strategic Business UnitsProper DeploymentRegular Follow-up until accomplishment of goalsMinor Modification of plans in accordance with the macro environment (legal, economic, financial etc.,) 3. Dis-Orientation of Senior Leaders: If a senior leader reaches that higher position through internal promotion, he loses touch with day-to-day activities though he has a strong contextual understanding of the business. If a senior management leader happens to reach the top through external recruitment, it takes time for him to understand the business and the nature and needs of the organization. Only few leaders are capable of devising action plans that exactly nails the problem-situation (as we all know when an organization is looking for a turn around, the first blow is to the CEO of the organization). 4. Laissez Faire attitude doesn’t work out for strategic action plans: A senior leader has to monitor an action plan from the start till the end until the expected result is achieved. No strategy succeeds without a visionary in the background. The passion that a leader exudes is overwhelmingly infectious and motivates the team to complete a project. Here the leader is the initiator who is involved throughout strategic planning process so that momentum is sustained during the critical transition from planning to action. Follow ManagementGuru Net’s board Strategic Management – The Inevitable on Pinterest. 5. There might be one good goal but definitely no one good strategy: Understand strategies are subjected to change in accordance with the internal and external environment. Say, you have invested quite a good amount of money in shares of a particular reputed company and you come to know that there is a senior level management leadership change and feelers are that prices are likely to crash. What will you do? Just being able to conceive bold new strategies is not enough. The management must also be able to translate its strategic vision into concrete steps that is “getting things...

Top 8 Mistakes That Kill #Startups Let us look at some mistakes that kill startups News: About three-quarters of venture-backed startup firms in the U.S. don’t return investors’ capital, according to recent research by Shikhar Ghosh, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School. This information made me think and I have tried to summarize the main reasons for flawed-startups below in order to caution the young and growing entrepreneurs. 1. An Unscalable Idea Understand that a Technology-driven idea with more mass appeal is what potential investors are looking for. If your business is not easily scalable across a wide market, higher margins cannot be reaped for the kind of money invested. It is always better that your product or service is appealing to all types of clients in the market. 2. #Lack of Competitive Research Don’t bother if the business idea you are about to launch already exists in the market; let yours be unique and new. Think different is what I would suggest. WhatsApp is one great example for unique contribution to the android market, don’t you think so? Make sure you are clearly differentiated from the others (e.g., better product, better value, different target client) and that your plan is SECURE against future market entrants who may try to imitate you after your initial success.  3. #No Focus ‘One thing at a time’ will be the mantra for startups where entrepreneurs have to concentrate on launching a single product at any given time. This will also help in giving clarity to those who work under you. Don’t try to be a jack-of-all-trades, but end up being a master-of-none without a laser-sharp focus to start. 4. Catch Hold of Investors even at an Early Stage: First try to send feelers to whom you think as potential investors through the right channels. Say, you are a builder and trying to launch your first project. How will you make money rolling in to keep your project going? Either you go for bank loans – no bank will offer you big loans without proper recommendation, fund-flow projection  and collaterals or you need to pitch-in this idea to known circles to popularize your product and raise seed money by way of advance. What I’m trying to highlight is that you need to bring in some initial investment which will help to keep the wheels rolling. 5. No Passion or Persistence Your passion should be infectious enough to attract the right kind of investors. Not all are lucky like Matteo Achilli, the 20 year Italian student, who is about to launch a new social networking site in the lines of LinkedIn, called ‘EGOMNIA”. ARVE error: Mode: lazyload not available (ARVE Pro not active?), switching to normal mode Tech giants like Microsoft and Google have already geared up themselves to support this lad in areas of marketing and cloud computing. We should appreciate Matteo for his passion to create a networking site where job seeking professionals will be ranked and then directly connected to the employers. His persistence has paid off and he has been termed as “Italy’s Mark Zuckerberg”. 6. Failing to Form a Well-Oiled Team: Let your team be like-minded persons with same objectives and working for a cause. Investors never will want to back-up a single individual, but a well-oiled team. Be courageous to put forward your ideas in an authentic manner. After all it is your own brain-child. If you don’t believe in it, who is going to? 7. Not Going for the Right Mentors: Be surrounded by people who have already tested and tasted success in the market. Experience is like a seasoned teacher having solutions for all your questions....