M&A STORIES - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

LIES, STATISTICS AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

March 20, 2021 Robert Heaton & Toby Tester
M&A STORIES - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
LIES, STATISTICS AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Show Notes

80% of all M&A deals fail is the cry you often hear and Toby takes this apart to show stats from recent surveys demonstrating that in reality, most deals are successful, but they have to be measured in terms of Strategic success, Financial Success and Operational success.

We then move on to talk about Artificial Intelligence (or Intelligent systems as Toby prefers to call it). Does AI have a strong role in M&A transactions? Well maybe, but it's still in its infancy and we will talk about this topic more in weeks to come.

And lastly in remembering Rob's former mentor, the late Les Hayman, we offer up three pieces of advice that should be best practice for anyone in a management position. 

  1. Be prepared to take the blame for failures, but always give the credit for success to your people.
  2. Be yourself at all times … don’t play different characters … schizophrenics are hard to follow.
  3. Never lie but don’t always feel the need to blurt out the truth.

We'll make this a regular part of our podcast each week from here on.