The cultural difficulties concerning the failed merger between Daimler and Chrysler are legendary, but not legendary enough it seems for Robert Diamond, president of Barclays Capital.  He found out the hard way that ignoring corporate culture can harm your business.  Eight weeks after the acquisition of Lehman Brothers’ US business much of the senior talent had left. Mr. Diamond’s famous ‘knee-jerk’ approach of getting rid of non-team players did not sit well with those he wished most to keep: “That approach is a style that is anathema to many of Lehman’s senior bankers who Mr. Diamond wants to retain, as well as the European bankers he’d like to attract” (FT November 3rd 2008).  It seems Mr Diamond has fallen foul of the first rule of an M&A – it’s people that make a business, it’s people you ‘buy’, and it’s people that are your most important asset – make sure you understand what makes them tick! Ignore culture at your peril.

Tags: Chrysler, cultural difficulties, culture, Daimler, Lehman Bothers, M&A, merger

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 30th, 2008 at 4:13 pm and is filed under cost of getting it wrong, General, international business . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.