I’ve been involved in mergers and acquisitions for decades, and I used to run an acquisition cleanup team while at IBM. I’ve seen so many bad acquisitions that it is generally far easier to point out the good ones. What is somewhat ironic, given my background, is that the best largely have been executed by Dell, using a process initially developed by IBM. One of the most painful mergers I was involved with was the one between HP and Compaq — which I aggressively tried to kill, fearing neither firm would survive it intact.
Carly Fiorina was a disaster pure and simple. However, Hurd was no better. He couldn't grow the company organically so he went on a massive spending spree. At the same time, he instituted his own draconian layoffs which were in the thousands on top of which he instituted an across-the-board pay cut of 10%. It didn't matter if you were a single parent living on $35K/ year, you got a cut if you were lucky enough to keep your job. His board hated him for his heavy-handiness (and pay cuts) and at the first sign of impropriety they brought out the knives. Next came Apotheker who tried to change HP's course by taking a page out of IBM's playbook. He doubled down on inorganically growing HP by spending $11 billion of HP's rapidly fading war chest on Autonomy, which was blessed by Meg Whitman who was on his board at the time. Meg took over, promptly whipped out a Paul Bunyan axe, and resumed the HP way of firing tens of thousands of employees while at the same time selling off any and all assets she could. From the sidelines, it's like watching the Titanic slip below the icy ocean waves for over 15 years while the various captains take turns yelling "Full steam ahead!" However, at least the captains get a lifeboat filled with millions when they are forced off the ship.
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Dell + EMC: History Is Made
Posted by: Rob Enderle September 5, 2016 05:00 AMI’ve been involved in mergers and acquisitions for decades, and I used to run an acquisition cleanup team while at IBM. I’ve seen so many bad acquisitions that it is generally far easier to point out the good ones. What is somewhat ironic, given my background, is that the best largely have been executed by Dell, using a process initially developed by IBM. One of the most painful mergers I was involved with was the one between HP and Compaq — which I aggressively tried to kill, fearing neither firm would survive it intact.