Synergon Capital and Beauchamp. "Can this merger be saved?" by Sarah Cliffe (PDF)

Case Study from the year 2020 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1.0, International University of Applied Sciences, language: English, abstract: This paper will analyze the case study "Can This Merger Be Saved?" written by Sarah Cliffe and published in the Harvard Business Review in 1999. The case study describes the problems the U.S. financial-services giant Synergon Capital (abbreviated with Synergon) is facing while acquiring the British financial-services provider Beauchamp, Becker & Company (abbreviated with Beauchamp).

The case study ends after a meeting between Julian Mansfield, the managing director of Beauchamp, and Nick Cunningham, his counterpart at Synergon. In this meeting, Mansfield expresses his dissatisfaction with the previous integration process and threatens to leave the company. Mansfield has been identified as the key success factor of Beauchamp and his withdrawal would signify the failure of the merger. Before the next meeting, Cunningham needs to find a solution to save the merger.

This paper will identify key problems jeopardizing the merger and provides recommendations for Cunningham as an attempt to turn the critical situation around.