How successful have Indian acquirers been in getting the cultural integration right?
That is definitely an issue. There are two models of integration. One is called big bang. Here, you say I am on the first day going to integrate everything and then I am going to get all the redundancies, all the cost savings within the first three to six months. Most developed country companies when they acquire other developed country companies, this is how it happens. It is very quick integration because cultural issues are minor. When you are doing cross-border acquisitions, you will almost leave it like a subsidiary so that you don’t even try to integrate. It is as if you are the holding company. And then slowly over time you will pull the company in. Because if you try to do the big bang integration, you will get so much cultural conflict that everybody’s eye will go off the operating performance to “Will my job be safe, what is the new process, are these Indians taking over?” So, it’s a very bad idea in cross-cultural integration to do the big bang approach. Much better to say,
