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Case Study

ISS acquisition strategy (A): 2000

By James E. Henderson and Polina Bochukova

13 pages

April 2012

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Reference: IMD-3-2282

This case is about driving a serial acquisition strategy – a 10 year journey for ISS, one of the largest integrated facilities services companies in the world. Through its 600 acquisitions over 10 years, the company transformed from being a Nordic cleaning company to a global powerhouse in integrated facilities services offering what the company calls ‘the full house’ of services including: cleaning, catering, security, office support and landscape services. Case (A) describes the early days of how to set up the organization for such an enormous task. The participants are left with the question of ‘how to go about it’ especially given that the normal approach has been to leave the responsibility of search, due diligence, and negotiations typically to a central M&A team. However, given the sheer numbers that would have to be examined — at least 6000 – the task becomes quickly overwhelming.

Learning Objective

Overall the learning objectives are threefold: 1) Determining the nature and organization scope of acquisition programs; 2) Recognizing the different approaches to acquisition integration depending on the strategic overlap with the existing business and need for cultural autonomy; 3) Recognizing when to stop acquisition programs as they can quickly take a life of their own.

Keywords

Mergers and Acquisitions, Acquisition Integration, Strategy, General Management

Settings

World/global
ISS
2000

Type

Field Research

Available Languages

English

Related material

Video

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