Speed in M&A Integration:: The First 100 Days

Speed has become the new mantra in business promising advantage, prosperity and success. It is now de rigeur in the domain of Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) with a rising tide of practitioners and consultants extolling the virtues of acting rapidly post-deal and the first 100 days, as critical for acquisition success. This symbolic period has become something of an urban myth but along with its underlying concept of speed as advantage, has not received critical treatment. Why has speed, as ethos, been so readily adopted in the M&A arena? What does speed really mean and does it deliver what it promises? This paper is the first to examine critically, speed and performance in M&A. The empirical evidence presented suggests we should be careful of an uncritical acceptance of the benefits of speed in post-acquisition integration.M&A Speed First 100 days Post-acquisition Time Success