Mergers Acquisitions Quotes

I spent many hours slaving away, day and night, bleary eyed, on multi-million pound takeovers, mergers and acquisitions, and the rest. It could sound glamorous (especially when it involved overseas travel) but often it wasn't partly because, as a lawyer, you were not the one calling the shots.

We like to buy businesses, but we don't like to sell them.

I believe the combination of Travelex and Apax will represent a powerful force.

Do you have the same vision of where industry is going as the target of your acquisition? If visions differ, you might get together economically for a while, but then you are going to have problems.

If your strategy calls for you to be in America, then you will go into America. If your strategy calls for you to be in M&A, then you'll do an acquisition. You usually acquire a company to acquire technology, geographic advantage, etc. Similarly, geographic expansion is very much like M&A. It's done to advance a strategy.

Any successful company in the valley gets acquisition offers and has to decide whether or not to take them.

I was vehemently against acquisitions. Now let's buy everything in sight. Well, that's a slight exaggeration. We are a little more strategic than that. But everything was on sale.

How do you make money? Spinoffs, split-ups, liquidations, mergers and acquisitions.

Among the world's 500 largest companies, not one has completely relied on its own growth to develop.

I love using a targeted acquisition approach in conjunction with a business that has a clear strategy and strong organic growth.

If a German company takes over 51 percent of an Indian one, it is given far-reaching controlling rights. But if an Indian company owns the majority of a German company, it is granted only very limited influence. That is unfair.

Our first use of cash is invested organically, secondly returning values our shareholders - roughly 100 percent free cash flow. And then thirdly, mergers, acquisitions, partnerships that complement our organic strategy. We are going to continue down that path.

Some managements do not even think of buybacks as an option. The idea of shrinking their equity base repels them. Their inclination instead is to get bigger, and this often leads them to pay rich prices for acquisitions that never earn their keep.

The Internet Treasure companies tend to go public rather than get acquired, although there are clear exceptions, like Instagram, YouTube, Skype and PayPal.

Our investment bank looks like it does because its customers like our expansive network and want to do equity, debt, M&A, custody, move money, deposit money, et cetera.

We got a lot of excellent people and businesses from Bear and WaMu. But Bear definitely was more painful. WaMu got us into Florida, California, and other states, which was a huge benefit - to expand and grow and add middle-market, private banking, investment banking, and other products, too.

In pharma, we continuously look for acquisitions... if it makes strategic sense and if there is any value.

It used to be that you would go in to see a CEO, and you would ask them, 'Is your company for sale?' and if they said 'No, we have no interest in selling,' that was sort of the end of the conversation.

If you go through some big corporate change, it's just not going to be the same. If we sold to Yahoo, they would have done something different; if you want to continue your vision of the company, then don't sell because there's inevitably going to be some change.