The delicate art of bringing two companies together
To an outsider, the global employee webcast from Merck KGaA’s headquarters on the close of the acquisition of Millipore Corporation would have looked like just another run-of-the-mill corporate announcement. To a Merck employee, however, two minor details signified a major cultural shift.
The Chairman of the German chemical and pharmaceutical company, Dr Karl-Ludwig Kley, appeared on stage at the July meeting in Darmstadt, Germany without a tie, and his fellow presenters called him Karl rather than Dr Kley. For Merck staff, this informality was surprising. For Millipore, the Billerica, Massachusetts-based life sciences company, it was welcoming and reassuring. As with many cross-border mergers, Millipore employees had been anxious about the culture at their new German parent, so the tie loosening was an important step in addressing their concerns. Dr Kley then spent the hour after the “town hall” meeting taking questions from German employees.
As Steffen Grimminger, head of the integration communications workstream for the merger, said: “From the moment we announced we were buying Millipore, we talked about our ‘best-of-both-worlds’ approach. This meant that
as we moved through the integration, we would weigh the merits of each company’s approach equally, and choose the best. It was important that our Chairman embraced this concept so visibly and really walked the walk.”
Merck and Millipore realized that no detail goes unnoticed when integrating two companies. Indeed, the process of bringing together two organizations inherently creates enormous uncertainty across key stakeholder groups. Employees, customers, shareholders, partners, public officials and regulators all want answers, at every stage of the process, to the same question: “What does this mean for me?”