FlyerTalk Forums - View Single Post - Breaking News: UA and CO strike merger agreement
Old May 1, 2010 | 12:31 pm
  #180  
mike_plat
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: SFO
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Originally Posted by Noctilux
Hi All;

I have known GB for a decade or so & he was in NYC last week, as was I & we ran into each other. I congratulated him on the upcoming merger, assuming that he still held CO shares which would now be worth more. He shook his head & said that he thought it was a bad idea; if I can remember the quote exactly it was "If you merge a big bad airline & a small good one, what you end up with is an even bigger bad airline".

He was still shaking his head at the thought of it as we parted.

I think he's right. I remember reading a HBS case when I was in business school about when GM bought Ross Perot's EDC in the 1980's in large part to change the culture at GM. Guess what. It was a miserable failure. The conclusion of the autopsy was that you can't expect the culture of a smaller entity to change that of a larger one. That may well happen with CoNited.
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