Customer Reviews

Winning at Mergers and Acquisitions : The Guide to Market Focused Planning and Integration

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There are many books on M & A out there. Winning at Mergers and Acquisitions is different...it truly delivers! Clemente and Greenspan share their experiences at each phase of the process - from strategy development through integration implementation. They give specific guidance on overcoming the challenges that every company encounters when it decides to do a deal. Their insights on how to keep customers and employees on board are priceless. They show how to link people, products and processes to top-line growth concerns. And most important, they explain how to accomplish effective integration. Winning at Mergers and Acquisitions is the most valuable acquisition I've made this year!

I love this book. The concept of marketing due diligence is not only brilliant but works in practice. As the authors stress, "doesn't it just make sense to focus on the people, products and processes of a company before during and after the deal." This is a big book - in size and content. It gets in-depth about all the areas it discusses. Many other books on M&A offer up a paragraph or two in addressing an issue. You're left with a crumb. Probably because they've never really done it. Clemente and Greenspan have obviously taken their real-life experiences and written about them -- in detail...case study after case study. Real life corporate officers are quoted, discussing what works and what doidn't. The level of honesty is groundbreaking in itself.There's very little that's theoretical or lacking real-world application. Due diligence, strategic thinking, analyzing the business environment, culture from every angle, driving revenues...it's all here, in depth and with step by step guidance. It's a wonderful source that I keep on my shelf and use a couple of times a week. This book is truly the M&A bible.

I'm in the midst of my third acquisition in two years. I have bought virtually every advisory book on M&A to help me get it right -- The Art of ...; Five Frogs...; Joining Forces, etc. While all of those were entertaining, in the final analysis, they were not really helpful in delivering results to my organization. Winning at Mergers and Acquisitions consistently addresses the real issues I've encountered through all the phases of M&A with viable solutions and profound instruction. Again and again, when I've been faced with a due diligence quandary or an integration roadblock, this book has accurately and coherently helped me and my company advance toward M&A success. These gentlemen invented a concept called marketing due diligence which transcends every other discovery mechanism we have used. They also focus on driving revenues which I found we urgently needed to do after our first acquisition failed to live up to its promise. This book has saved my company millions and probably secured my job in the process. If there is one book that will make a difference in the vast sea of M&A literature, it is Winning at Mergers & Acquisitions. Thank you gentlemen.

Well written, very relevant, and quite helpful. Chock full of case studies, very specific guidance and especially the "insiders outlooks" where managers who are going through it talk candidly about what works and what doesn't. Good insights on culture and driving revenues. Hundreds of pages of real life experiences. A very good book for those who don't have all the answers. After I read this book, I was a lot smarter.

Winning at Mergers is a brilliant book. It is not an ABC of M&A. As a former investment banker, I can see how it might turn off those consumed with completing transactions. Several chapters advise against doing deals that would undermine the success of the combined entity. That's a somewhat radical concept considering accountants and bankers have a singular objective in mind when faced with a corporate marriage. This book is ideal for graduate business courses. It takes the reader from the basic M&A 101 accounting-focused level to a broader and more business-focused level. That's what makes it stand out. It's more a book about successful business than number crunching. This book focuses on real-world challenges and operational factors to help a deal move from strategy through completion. It is divided into three parts: strategy; pre-deal (due diligence, etc.); and integration. The chapters on culture, organizational design and integration tactics make it worth the price of admission. No other book that I have read takes this approach. From the detail provided at every step of the way, the guidance seems tried, tested and improved upon. The book is also very well written. Interesting and filled with case studies and quotes that make the insights fresh. As another reviewer suggested, it is the perfect companion book to a dryer and more elementary book like Patrick Gaughin's. Without the insights of Clemente and Greenspan, one ventures into M&A with only a rudimentary understanding of what it truly takes to make a deal work and a company succeed. I recommend this book as a business tool and a reality check on whether one is even approaching transactions correctly.

Several months ago, copies of this book were distributed to our executive team in anticipation of an acquisition. We've since bought several more copies. The deal has progressed smoothly and primarily due to the guidance of Messrs. Clemente and Greenspan. It's as if they've read our minds in reference to the challenges we would face. Each time that a major obstacle or uncertainty has presented itself, "Winning at Mergers and Acquisitions" clearly and articulately has delivered the solution. The chapter on their methodology "marketing due diligence" is truly out-of-the-box thinking and has helped to shed new light on even the most mundane aspects of the process. Strategy, acquisition planning, cultural issues, integration implementation, and the like are all addressed with multiple case studies and practical guidance. We have greased the skids for cross-selling and revenue generation as they've instructed and the results speak for themselves. We are clearly ahead of schedule because of this book. Whenever we have balked at one of the book's solutions, we've found ourselves quickly in trouble and have gone back and implemented the guidance to remarkable success. Our gameplan for this amalgamation as well as for future ones is now neatly laid out. I can only imagine that more deals would have succeeded if they had stuck to the guidance so brilliantly imparted on these pages. In fact, I can't quite figure out how we ever had the audacity to make an acquisition before reading this book.

Finally, a book that covers both sides of the acquisition --the necessary pre-deal planning and the critical post-deal integration. The authors' methodological framework, which stresses marketing due diligence and focuses on revenue synergies, is groundbreaking. Reading this book will increase the odds of success for anyone involved in a merger or acquisition. --Thomas Waimes

This book is brilliant. It takes you behind the scenes to explore companies' cultures, management structures, marketing practices and strategic focus. It explains what companies have done wrong and what others have done right. You can really get a sense of how easy it is to take a wrong turn when acquiring or merging. The authors share so many case studies that when I applied their "critical success factors" to a recent deal that I worked on, virtually every decision led our team down the right path. These guys aren't pitching work like so many other books on the market. They freely give their methodology away and it's brilliant. After reading, you really understand corprate culture and its influences. The guidance is priceless both pre-deal and post.

When Charles Harris says this is a great book, he is understating the truth. What a fabulous creation. I'd heard of the work performed by Clemente and Greenspan, and read their article on Marketing Due Diligence in the Harvard Management Review. But not till I read this classic from cover to cover did I fully realize the depth of their guidance and the extent of their groundbreaking contributions to the corporate world. The lessons contained in EVERY SINGLE CHAPTER are so informative and instructive that I was genuinely saddened when the experience was over. The book is very well written and so reader friendly that it stands apart from every other book on this subject that I have read. I picked up another copy as a gift for my CEO. If half of it sinks in, we'll never blow another acquisition ever again. I've been transformed by this M&A bible and only wished I had read it sooner.

This is a great book. Similar to Jemison's Managing Acquisitions, this is a book that provides extensive information on many strategic topics. The book is well-written, far from dry, yet really digs down deep. It departs from Jemison in its real-world application. The book details where other companies have gone wrong and where others have made the right decisions. It is a bit high level, so I don't think it would suffice as one's first introduction to business. But I was exposed to this book as a grad student at Vanderbilt and it has plugged me in more quickly to the world of organizational design, cultural analysis, and specific business strategies than I would have guessed. Real interesting book. I could see having it around for a long time to come.