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An Investment Thesis Statement

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2.6.1 How Should You Pick Your Targets? Invest With a Thesis An investment thesis is a statement on how a specific deal will create value for a partic-ular merged company. This document explains why and how an acquisition improves the existing core business. Firms compete on cost position, brand power, customer loy-alty, assets and sometimes government protection (Harding, D. and Rovit, S. 2004). In order to develop an investment thesis you need to analyse the core competency of your own business and how the firm produces value. Furthermore, acquires need to under-stand how to enhance core competency by acquiring outside targets. In order to suc-cessfully identify appropriate target the acquirer must determine its own basis of com-petition. …show more content…

These revolve around the question of where do operations need to be integrated, and where the merging businesses can carry on separately. To answer this work with four decision principles (Harding, D. and Rovit, S. 2004). 1) Plan for ownership. Launch integration plans months prior to the deal being publicly announced. Link decisions to the deal's in-vestment thesis and to the synergies and cultural issues identified. Integrate quickly in critical areas. 2) Target areas for integration based on the investment thesis. Mergers aimed at creating economies of scale require almost seamless integration. However, mergers aimed at product extension, customer and geographic scope require selective integration. 3) Put culture high on your leadership agenda. Managers of merged organi-zations need to retool their corporate culture to fit with the deal's investment thesis. Tools include hard tactics-organizational structure, incentives compensation and the di-vision of decision-making authority-to address cultural integration. 4) Retain key re-sources in the core businesses. Mergers can exert a gravitational pull on employees. Keep the talented focused on taking care of business. Develop a plan to maintain key employees and protect the customer base. Effective integration generally ranks as the single most important factor influencing the success of a deal (Harding, D. and Rovit, S.

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