Mergers & Acquisitions

Shiven Grover

Entrepreneurship 301

Professor Fitz Gibbon

6 March 2009

Byron Clayton - Mergers & Acquisitions

Reading about mergers and acquisitions isn’t the most thought provoking activity. In fact, mergers and acquisitions didn’t seem so unusual to me, but that was before Byron Clayton, master of mergers and acquisitions came to present his business experiences with us. I had known of companies merging and acquiring other companies, but when one employee goes through seven or eight mergers and acquisitions it’s a different story. I was very intrigued to hear about Byron’s experiences and learn more about mergers and acquisitions, specifically his take on some of the costs and benefits.

Byron began by telling us a little bit of his background and then moved onto true business adventures. Byron originally worked in an engineering co-op in a GM factory. He didn’t like the system of eating lunch because he didn’t know who exactly he had to eat with and got in trouble for eating with the wrong people. I found that to be quite ridiculous, but I believe that would also drive me away from working with a larger business if similar events occurred. Byron’s first job after college was a joint venture with a French company known as CyberTech; the company eventually merged with an American company for their parts. Byron explained to us that his boss underwent significant amounts of stress and that the next boss actually had a heart attack. The stress must have been staggering, which I didn’t realize until Byron described his experiences. It’s understandable that there would be significant stress being a boss in that situation, but pushing someone to a heart attack is outrageous. He said there was tons of stress related to organizational change and that is logical because as soon as anyone is out of their norm they feel different.

Byron worked with many companies that had some type of merger or acquisition. Another specific experience he had was with a...