Top 10 company takeovers that went the worst, how much did we lose Daniel?
Cash, money, profit, growth, pretty Bernard tie, billions, performances, chouquettes in the meeting room. Now that I’ve drowned you in the jargon of wealthy people who work in the upper strata of the world’s big corporations, you’re already more likely to understand the topic of the day, which is the worst takeovers. Those times when big bosses wanted to take over another company because it made you want to make even more money by giving less resources to the employees you had just bought out.
1. Twitter
It will probably not have escaped you that following the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk, events took on quite spectacular proportions. Not to mention the third of employees released overnight, it was the appearance of the hashtag #RipTwitter that brought a new dramatic dimension to the media. Using a tool to talk about the death of this tool has something poetic about it, but that doesn’t stop it from being a huge mess and it’s pretty bad for the media if nothing changes.
2. Canal +
Do you remember when Canal + radiated with its prime time shows with funny programs, incredible guests and where everything seemed possible? It was before the takeover of the chain by Vincent Bolloré, a man who knows what he wants and what he wants is rarely to pay people. Suddenly he freed a lot of people, cut off the heads of historical programs like the Guignols and created a climate of fear on the channel before destroying it from the inside.
3. Nokia
Back when smartphones were beginning to flood the market and replace touch-tone phones, Microsoft had found itself far behind the competition with a particularly crappy OS and unattractive models. The firm therefore decided to buy back one of the middle weights which was none other than Nokia for the modest sum of 7 billion dollars. Except that the phones manufactured by the brand, the famous Lumiadid not at all convince the public and Nokia was forced to lay off 15,000 employees before ceasing to produce new models for over a year. Bad redemption.
4. Gamekult
After the sale of the group Unify which belonged to TF1 for the benefit of Reworld, a wave of fear touched several media that were part of the group. Because, Reworld is often recognized as a giant who makes huge budget cuts while demanding the same results, like taking his car away from a taxi and asking him to take people at the same speed as before to their destination . In the middle of this meander is all the excellent writing of the site From Gamekult who decided with one voice to leave the site by a common resignation, what we can call a failed takeover, because recovering an empty shell is never what we want at the base. Strength to them, these talented and passionate journalists who, we hope, will be able to bounce back.
5. I TV
Around the same time Vincent Bolloré bought Canal +he had decided to buy the news channel I TV because he had some pocket money left over from his business in Africa, if you can call the exploitation of resources that don’t belong to someone business. Be that as it may, his desire to transform I TV in NEWS did not go smoothly since a long editorial strike was started by a large part of the team until the departure of nearly 70 journalists, which is quite enormous.
6. Motorola
Among Google‘s biggest failures is the takeover of the company Motorola. Basically, this acquisition, costing 12.5 billion dollars, was supposed to enable Google to place itself at the head of the world of mobile telephony, exactly as wanted to do Microsoft with Nokia. Except that the company failed at all to create convincing models and that the two-O firm lost a huge amount of money before finally selling the company. Motorola at Lenovo for 2.9 billion two years later. See the nice price difference.
7. Time Warner (Average Warner)
We are in 2001 (not in the first degree, reassure yourself) and the giant AOL wants to buy the media Time Warner to develop its own media center. To do so, the company pays 65 billion dollars except that it does not really understand how one takes care of a media and makes a series of disastrous choices and directions which precipitated this acquisition towards a ravine from which emanated a deep shit smell. Results, AOL recorded a year later the highest annual loss for a company ever with 99 billion net loss. Too bad, they were that close to hitting the 100 billion.
8. Chrysler (Stellantis)
When the group Mercedes-Benz wanted to acquire Chrysler in 1998 it was not necessarily a crazy idea. Two automobile giants who find themselves faced with the same goal: to sell a lot of cars. The problem here is that the two companies operated in extremely different ways: Mercedes-Benz had a vertical hierarchy then Chrysler had a flat hierarchy, the first was completely structured and methodical in its way of producing while the second was rather creative and sought innovation before performance. With two dissonant organizations it was predictable that it broke the mouth and that is precisely what happened: Benz sold 80% of its shares in Chrysler for 7 billion, losing no less than 20 billion. The car is expensive.
9. Gamestop
Without really being a takeover led by a company, the Gamestop affair had stirred up the world of the stock market when thousands of Internet users had come to short-circuit the plans of the giants of the environment by giving a little shit. Needless to say that this had been a huge financial tidal wave from a forum Reddit and it was beautiful to see, what we manage to do together when we unite against those who take us for idiots.
10. The French government
When the French government was taken over by a whole bunch of lobbies, we had the right to dream, saying to ourselves that companies like Total, Dassault or Air France were going to be able to enjoy unparalleled freedom to make France shine on a global level, but no. Once again the takeover went badly, note also that this is the only takeover where the acquired company (the government) spun (public) money to its buyer, and that has the merit to be original. Also note that I denounce something that I do not understand, but it is often done in France and could bring me a job at TPMP.
