Leadership is an endless topic and this time around Robert and Toby examine M&A Leadership at the CEO level. Robert kicks off by giving two examples. #1 is a CEO who is a high-risk taker but has charmed the board, shareholders, and Wall Street with his daring acquisition strategy but is never seen to engage below the C suite level. #2 is a CEO who has a steady and consistent relationship with the board and shareholders but is also highly visible at operational levels and with customers. The ...
Oct 03, 2021•26 min•Transcript available on Metacast Leadership is one of those topics that is really hard to wrap your head around because, in Robert and Toby's opinion, Leadership isn't just the person with the grandest title at the top of the tree, Leadership is invested in many people through every facet of an organization. That is particularly true in Mergers and Acquisitions where Leadership should be demonstrated by different people at varying stages of the M&A deal cycle. In this episode we unpick the leadership responsibilit...
Sep 17, 2021•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this latest podcast, Robert and Toby have pivoted away from M&A disaster stories and moved towards an examination of leadership? Why you might ask. Well, in all of Robert and Toby's experience, good leadership (or bad leadership for that matter) has been the instrumental factor in whether an acquisition is successful. So that got the dastardly duo thinking about what exactly defines leadership? Are good leaders simply born that way or can people be developed into leadership? The answ...
Aug 31, 2021•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast Another acquisition dissected by the dastardly duo of Toby Tester and Robert Heaton and this week it's Google's $12.5Bn acquisition of Motorola. A deal which they then sold to Lenovo less than 2 years later, for $2.9Bn. On the first examination, this looks like a disaster, but in reality, Google came out of this break-even. Why? because Motorola had $3.2Bn in cash, the sale to Lenovo offered Google a $2.5Bn tax benefit and they retained 17,000: Yes, you read that correctly - Seventeen ...
Aug 17, 2021•19 min•Transcript available on Metacast You might have thought that Robert and Toby would have run out of M&A disaster stories by now? Oh, Ye of little faith. THis week we explore Sprint's majority shareholding acquisition of Nextel to try and unpack how a $35 Billion investment in 2005, resulted in a $30 Billion write-off just three years later. The deal vision made sense and there were significant economies and efficiencies to make the combined business a challenging #3 globally to AT&T and Verizon. Better still, there ...
Jul 27, 2021•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week Robert and Toby discuss the failed 'merger. between automotive giants Chrysler and Daimer-Benz. On paper this was supposed to be a win-win. The $36 Billion 'Merger of Equals' was supposed to raise Benz's market share in the U.S. auto market. Chrysler was supposed to improve its vehicles through Daimler-Benz' car expertise and the combined strength of Daim;er-Chrysler would stave off competition from the Japanese and deliver synergies and other benefits worth $8...
Jul 20, 2021•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast A Frenchman and an American walk into a bar and over pissaladière and fried chilli chicken wings come up with the idea of working together and operating efficiently from their respective home turf to compete cost effectively with competitors from China and Asia Pacific. What could possibly go wrong On face value, the merger of Alcatel and Lucent was a necessity to ward off serious global competition from Huawei and other telecom competitors. The combined strength of both organisations made sense...
Jul 15, 2021•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast In today's episode Robert draws on personal experience of Oracles acquisition of Peoplesoft and subsequently J.D.Edwards. Robert was part of J.D.Edwards global leadership at the time so watched this deal evolve from the inside. And whilst his career suffered as a result (Oracle removed the J.D.Edwards leadership team) Robert has to admire the brilliance of Ellison's strategy and execution. This was Larry Ellison at his finest. He saw Peoplesoft and J.D.Edwards agreeing-to merge and pou...
Jul 06, 2021•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast Robert & Toby continue to unpack some of the worst M&A deals in corporate history and this week it's the disastrous $350 Billion merger / acquisition between AOL and Time Warner. On the surface, this 1999 deal was the stuff of dreams and it made a lot of sense in many ways BUT - This was DOT.COM era, the bubble had just burst and high speed broadband internet was rapidly replacing Time Warners dial up modem technology. Worse still, the dream was never transformed into a clear vision...
Jul 06, 2021•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast Last week we asked the question Could it get any worse? Well, Toby has excelled as usual and the acquisition of Autonomy must go down in history as one of the worst, most value-destroying deals in the history of the Tech Industry and Corporate America. This story is a bit like “Air Crash Investigations”. It’s not just one factor that conspired in a complete M&A disaster, but a number. Let’s list them: A CEO desperate to make a deal and rushed the process Two diametrically opposing cultures: ...
Jun 16, 2021•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast In the past weeks, we've been reviewing some thew worst M&A disasters in corporate history and this week I think Toby has found one of, if not THE worst M&A disaster in corporate history. This was Royal Bank of Scotland's disastrous takeover of Dutch Bank, ABN Amro in 2007 and not only was it a massive disaster for Royal Bank of Scotland, it almost brought the UK economy to its knees. Bottom line, it had ALL the hallmarks of a recipe for guaranteed disaster: An egocentric bully...
Jun 08, 2021•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast Robert and Toby continue to unpack some of the most disastrous M&A deals in corporate history. This week it's EBay's costly and disastrous acquisition of Skype. Her's the dot-points. Ebay thought it could leverage Skype to provide a voice and video channel for its customers and sellers to communicate. What they didn't do was talk to their customers, because they would have learned that EBay customers want anonymity and were perfectly happy with messaging and email communi...
Jun 03, 2021•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast We continue to unpack some of history's M&A disasters and this week Toby delves into what he calls YAHOO's Murder of Flickr. This story kicks off in 2003 during the early years of the internet when Flickr was a fledgling start-up desperately needing a larger partner to accelerate the innovation and seize what could have been a massive transformational opportunity. On paper Yahoo looked like the ideal partner but in reality the partnership was ambushed by Corporate Development who w...
May 25, 2021•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast The recent announcement that Japan Post have finally unloaded Toll's Global Express to Apollo Equity Partners will bring a sigh of relief in Japan Post's boardroom and a wry smile to the face of Apollo's Leadership. Better still, the appointment of Christine Holgate as Global Express' CEO is a smack in the teeth for Australia Post. Watch this space (if you will excuse the pun) Robert and Toby are by no means experts on the initial acquisition of Toll Group by Japan Post and t...
May 13, 2021•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast We've set out on a quest to narrow down M&A to a set of key principles that can be expressed in one line statements. It's a work in progress, but Toby sets out an example to get the conversation started We follow this up with a conversation about that feeling of either certain confidence or get wrenching uneasiness that you might get as you review your progress in an M&A deal. Some call it Emotional Intelligence, but what is it exactly? And as usual we finish up with three furt...
May 06, 2021•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast Toby's prediction from 6 months ago comes true as he shares the news that Westpac will use divestitures to drive a massive 21% annual savings across the business. We discuss how this will be a repeat pattern as other businesses re-focus on their core strengths and aim to build protection from post COVID experiences and also deliver stronger returns to shareholders. Robert introduces the principles of Murphy's Law and Sixth Sense in M&A using a very recent deal collapse where Murphy...
May 05, 2021•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast After riding his bike up the side of a mountain, Toby's endorphins kicked in and he has proposed a great idea. You can learn more from listening to this podcast and we would welcome any contributions you might make. M&A Integration is about keeping it simple but as Einstein says "you've got to make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler" and it's this topic that Robert and Toby explore. Then just as we thought we had simplicity nailed, Robert introduces SP...
Apr 22, 2021•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast An extended episode today as Robert and Toby are joined by special guest, Daniel Levy from Melbourne based Kidder Williams, to talk about the multi-faceted topic of compliance and the implications on the deal outcome if overlooked. Kidder Williams Providing Corporate Advisory and Investment Banking services to private and ASX-listed companies, We start off by letting Toby have a regular rant, and this week he's having a bellyache about culture and how cultural change should be addressed as ...
Apr 13, 2021•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast As you might expect , Robert and Toby unpack several topics in today's conversation. We kick off by asking if inspirational leaders are good for business? Not always it seems, especially if that 'inspiration' is driven by ego or is associated with excessive risk taking. And inspirational leaders can also be of little value if they only influence a small audience. Once we finish this topic, it's time for Toby to have a rant, M&A Integration is the enemy of innovation says ...
Apr 12, 2021•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast I am joined today by real life. Bonafide London trained actor, Dale Stevens Dale has played the role of an assassin in mission possible and as a detective in blue healers, but today she prefers to use that creativity to grow influence in the people that she coaches she uses her extensive experience in theatre, film, and TV to inform her unique approach to coaching where she emphasises the importance of 'being present' to create powerful messaging that inspires new behaviours. Dale brin...
Apr 06, 2021•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast In last week's topic we unpacked the myth of M&A failure rates and this week, Toby expands on the discussion to talk about the deal value disconnect whereby what was envisaged when the deal was crafted, is often very different to what post deal activities uncover. We offer some thoughts as to why this might be the case but we'd welcome your thoughts and experiences. We then move on. Toby's crystal ball has been recharged and we gaze gleefully to offer some insights into the vo...
Mar 23, 2021•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast 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 ...
Mar 20, 2021•25 min•Transcript available on Metacast It's the second episode with our new format and Robert brings up a recent Financial Review post that suggests there will be significantly less 'strategic' M&A deals because companies are focused on getting back to post COVID normal. As you might expect, Toby is dubious (as is Robert to some degree so we've published the link here so you can form your own opinions Toby continues to examine trends that suggest 2021 and beyond are going to be bumper years for M&A (althou...
Mar 06, 2021•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast After the Christmas hiatus, The Dastardly Duo of Rob and Toby are back and they are trying a new format for the M&A War Stories podcast. In today's episode Rob and Toby reflect on trends in M&A deals, they have a rant about how the impact of culture in deals is often misunderstood and mismanaged and then they change gear and examine the recent acquisition of ME Bank by Bank of Queensland. We hope you enjoy the new format as much as we enjoy recording it - but we are quite certain ou...
Feb 28, 2021•23 min•Transcript available on Metacast It's our last podcast for 2020 and your hosts on M&A War Stories, Toby Tester and Robert Heaton reflect on the common theme of leadership that has been a constant throughout all of our podcasts. We also look back on which topics have been out individual favourites and we leave our listeners with six key takeaways for the year. We'd like to wish all our listeners around the world the very best for the festive season and our hopes that you each spend quality time with friends and fam...
Dec 16, 2020•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this week's story Robert and Toby talk about an experience with a senior executive who’s rapid career success elevated him to the ‘big chair’ but confronted him with a woe some lack of preparedness for the people, responsibilities and accountability that he now faced. We’ll start 12 years back when a young sales guy walked into his new job with an eagerness to succeed. It wasn’t long before he had demonstrated a natural ability for sales and it was no surprise when he was promoted to a s...
Dec 08, 2020•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast Some 20 years ago Toby Tester had the good fortune to study Existentialism as part of his MBA at Macquarie University. Apart from being what he thought was a pretty cool subject at the time, the existentialist view on responsibility continues to resonate with him to this day. It's a type of responsibility that's deep, introspective and uncompromising. People need to go forth into the world with a moral and psychological responsibility for literally everything they say and do. As the Fr...
Dec 02, 2020•27 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this episode of M&A War Stories, I put Toby Tester under pressure with a theoretical scenario Imagine this? You're a technology business and in the past three years one of your regions has made 2 acquisitions that are aimed at enhancing the products and services that you can offer to clients. You will also ‘acquire’ some new customers as a result of these acquisitions. To date, you haven’t integrated those acquisitions into your core business but you have had some sales success selli...
Nov 26, 2020•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast The economic turmoil caused by the coronavirus pandemic is likely to unleash a wave of deals as companies look to offload business units to help generate cash, strengthen the balance sheet and become more resilient to what may be a more turbulent future. It’s during a crisis, like we have now, where organisations need to refocus their business and think about where they are going to invest. Divestitures can be a highly profitable way of selling assets that, for whatever reason, are no longer cor...
Nov 17, 2020•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast This isn’t a story about M&A as such but it’s a story about customer service that left its mark on me and several other people at the time. It also delivers powerful lessons for M&A practitioners about the need to ensure customer service levels are maintained during and after post deal integration. The occasion was a Board meeting in San Francisco. It was 7:00pm and the only item left on the agenda was where to hold the staff Christmas dinner that year. We didn’t really have any firm ide...
Nov 11, 2020•15 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
