Fred Wilson: M&A Issues: The Integration Plan

For the past month we've been doing M&A Case Studies on MBA Mondays. It's time to go back to the basics of M&A. I laid them out in this post. For the next few weeks, I am going to discuss each of the key issues in detail. First up is the integration plan. The integration plan is the way the buyer plans to operate your business post acquisition. You should get this figured out before you sign the Purchase Agreement. You are going to have to live with the results of the integration and you had better buy into it before you sign your company away to someone else. There are two primary ways a buyer can "integrate" an acquisition. The first way is they mostly leave your company alone. Examples of this are Google's acquisition of YouTube, eBay's acquisition of Skype, and The Washington Post Company's acquisition of Kaplan (one of my favorite M&A cases).