M&A integration food for thought 1) Where are we going? Start a conversation with your leadership team about how the new organization will create value in the future. The place you’re going doesn’t exist yet. You get to invent it. 2) How can we get there? How will the new organization operate? How will it satisfy customers? …
A new working paper (abstract; PDF) by Tanja Artiga Gonzalez, Markus Schmid, and David Yermack looks for the telltale signs of corporate fraud. The paper is called “Smokescreen: How Managers Behave When They Have Something To Hide”: We study financial reporting and corporate governance in 216 U.S. companies accused of price fixing by antitrust authorities. …
Tool | March 2013 Economic Outlooks ↔ GDP growth. Though slow in early ’13, around 2% for the year ↔ Interest rates. Little change through mid-’13, 10-year T-notes at year-end, 2.25% ↑ Business spending. About a 4%gain in ’13, half of ’12’s pace ↑ Housing sales. Existing homes up 7.5% in ’13, new ones more than …
Key points to think about: Strategy and repositioning Product development and planning Supply chain optimization Digital disruption and channel strategy Media migration and marketing strategy Business model reinvention Customer segmentation and messaging Sales force effectiveness Pricing [and, the gross-to-net/price “waterfall”] Go-to-Market [G2M] approach & channel partners Cross selling and customer retention Sales & marketing …
A Promising Investment Opportunity? Here is a viable scenario that is based on recent trends (e.g., Macro Demographic Changes, Lifestyle Shifts, Technological Tends, New Business Models, and Intensified Competitive Dynamics): Reimagining the convenience store. C-stores are uniquely positioned to exploit new demands for convenience and increasing urbanization. They’re already closer to consumers than any other …
This is an old Mesa Associates [the forerunner to Axis Associates] pricing paper that was published in The Journal of Professional Pricing. It reminds me of the old George Santayana [philosopher, essayist, poet, and novelist] quote from his work titled The Life of Reason (1905-1906): “Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When …