Cost of acquiring the Continental Division.

[Pat Marshall]

I went through several mergers, which were referred to "Mergers of Equals" and in each case one side was always more equal than the other. Twice I was on the more equal side, the last one...not so much! (the merger of Dart Industries, a conglomerate and Kraft Foods, a chessy company ).

Your comments about the engineers and accountants are interesting. My experience regarding accountants is similar, they were really great in di-vesting unprofitable operations. Engineers were excellent in enhancing business segments, but were thought to lack longer term strategic vision. However the companies I was associated with were consumer marketing related, not high-tech operations where engineers play highly prominent roles.

In my experience the Marketing guys seemed to win out.

One thing for sure is that organizations don't need two corporate headquarters staffs, and that's an immediate cash savings for companies who are merging internal divisions or acquiring new operations. The less-equal staff is always the loser.