On Wednesday, January 16, 2019, the German M&A Association held its inaugural meeting to merge the activities of the Society for Post-Merger Integration (GfPMI) and the BM&A’s PMI initiatives into the BM&A’s new PMI working group. This will become a further strategic component of the BM&A this year and in 2020, alongside the Digitalization & M&A and Company Valuation working groups and the planned China M&A initiatives.
The first meeting was held at Augsburg University of Applied Sciences. As part of the kick-off, the GfPMI was accepted into the BM&A with the “passing of the baton” from former GfPMI CEO Dr. Ralf Held, who successfully shaped the GfPMI with the participating companies into a sought-after think tank on the topic of integration, to Prof. Dr. Thorsten Feix, who will head the new PMI working group as co-chair of the BM&A. The host, Prof. Thorsten Feix, welcomed a large number of top-class companies from the GfPMI and the BM&A, representatives of the BM&A, such as the chairman Prof. Kai Lucks, as well as representatives from colleges and universities. The number and quality of participants and participating companies at the workshop demonstrated the high level of clout the new working group is likely to have in the future.
After a welcoming address by the Dean of the Faculty of Business and Economics at Augsburg University of Applied Sciences, Prof. Michael Feucht, and its Vice President, Prof. Manfred Uhl, current developments and problems in PMI were discussed in agile, design-thinking-based workshops and goals and topics for the new PMI working group and the individual working groups to be formed were defined. Topics included, for example, standardization and best practices for the integration and M&A process, the consideration of integration issues in all phases of the M&A process, the transformation of the integration and M&A process through digitalization and digital tools, the transformation and digitalization of companies through M&A, cultural integration, ecosystem integration, cooperation with colleges and universities, knowledge documentation and knowledge transfer as well as PMI working group events. Five specific areas of work were then defined. Finally, the day’s findings were discussed with the EY partners for integration, David Müller-Elmau and Mr. Bender. The next steps are to start work in the working groups and to plan the PMI Congress 2019, where the knowledge of the working group will be passed on to interested companies and the public. The next meeting of the PMI working group will take place on May 9, 2019.
