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Maddy's read
The price is the smallest part of this. The part to read slowly is what happens if the deal closes.
Three weeks ago this letter covered Eli Lilly announcing it would acquire Merida Biosciences, a clinical-stage company, for up to $2.875 billion, where nobody was laid off. This one is a different shape. Two companies of comparable size end up under one roof, and where that happens some senior seats end up with more than one qualified name on them. Duplicate seats are the first thing an integration team looks for, and they look for them in documents, long before anyone is introduced. Nobody in that meeting is deciding who is better. They are deciding who they can describe.
The last integration I worked, a leader had been brought in specifically to run the merge. The first ask was not performance reviews. It was who could describe each person in one line.
Here is the possibility inside it. A stranger from the other company is going to look you up before anyone introduces you. What they can understand from that page is what you get called next. Your own leadership already knows what you do. In a merger, your own leadership is not the room.
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