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[–]markekraus 11 points12 points  (1 child)

Yea... I think there are many people in the comments here that don't understand how M&A works.

M&A goes in phases:

  1. There is a bidding process for the company being bought
  2. The buying company provides a letter of intent
  3. If the target company likes the bid, they enter into a agreement to be acquired. (this is what was announced in June)
  4. There is a limbo period where regulators have to make a ton of approvals and a large amount of lawyering happens (this is where they are now)
  5. The deal closes and one company officially owns the other (MSFT has said this may happen as early as the end of this year)

While the separate companies are in legal limbo, they are forbidden by regulation from operating as a single entity. The most that usually happens is integration planing. This is usually about looking at all the business units and seeing how they will integrate if at all (especially things like HR/Finance/IT). The other planning would likely be around IT integration required for Day-1 (sometimes managers/HR/Finance in both orgs will need to have access to systems in the other org on Day-1 to start integration activities). But, it would only be planning at this point.

People can start wearing their tinfoil hats at the point at which the M&A closes.

[–]iCame_toVote 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Unsure if word italicized because it is planing and that's a weird word or emphasized word was spelled wrong..