Most deals fail to deliver the value they promise. The reasons are usually structural; but one of them hides in plain sight, on the front of the building, the vans, the spec sheets and the invoices. Nobody decided, deliberately and in time, what the combined business should be called and how its brands should relate.
The cost of leaving the question open compounds quietly. Sales teams spend their meetings explaining the new structure instead of selling. Customers hedge because they cannot tell whether their trusted supplier still exists. And the equity in the legacy names erodes while the integration team works through systems and synergies.
The internal answer is frequently the wrong one. When we researched portfolios after deals for groups like Etex, legacy names held equity in places leadership had stopped looking; and group names that felt powerful internally meant little at the point of purchase.
Source: Harvard Business Review analyses put acquisition failure rates between 70 and 90 per cent.
