Chris Zook, head of Bain & Co.’s global strategy practice, has a new book out called “Unstoppable” that argues that the key to increasing the market value of your company is unlocking its hidden assets. Not only that, Zook says that large mergers can be counterproductive.
Zook analyzed fifteen of the biggest mergers of the past ten years, like AOL and Time Warner, and found that none of these companies increased their market value by more than the average of the stock market during that period. Eleven of those companies actually saw a dip in market value, and seven dropped in value by more than fifty percent.
The businesses that were successful were able to leverage their existing assets within their organizations’ core businesses. This included reevaluating undervalued business platforms, unexploited customer assets, and underutilized capabilities.
So which companies were successful at doing this? Well, IBM, American Express, and Nike were some of them. You can find out more from this short excerpt of Zook’s book provided by BaslineMag.com.
