ASEA and BBC come to merge to form one fo the mightiest poer engineering groups in the world? What were the synergies? We really need to understand this to create a clear background to better comprehend the regorganization that took place at ABB after the merge. .
The merger between ASEA and BBC is a brilliant example of how you can sense the eveolving global strategies and the processes of corporate transformation that these two compies have endured to survive in a competitive market.
The merge between ASEA and BBC is a fascinating peice of corporate history. It was the biggest cross border merge of Europe at that time. The merger formed a %15 billion power systems company with 160,000 employees. The merge had completed on paper but the real work was yet to be started.
All the questions revolved around one thing. What was the best way to rationalize and restructure the two copies and integrate them in practice? Moreover, how could ABB motivate its thousnads of managers to inject dynamism into the gigatntic organziation created by the merger?.
Restructuring and Growth stategies.
Focus on power.
They decided to staty in the power business and meet the demand whenever it would pick up.
Create a new corporate identity.
A unique logo was created to coomunicate the new identity.
Streamline operations.
The merged company's initial concern was to eliminate overlapping manufacturing and distriution operations and pooling of the R&D efforts.
Target Americas and Asia.
The growth strategy aimed at consolidating the European operations and reach out to the Americas and Asia.
The aim was to build an organization that would create a spirit of entrepreneurship in the heart of employees and make them lose the false sense of security of belonging to a big organization.