Acquisitions – finally something to cheer about…?

Decades of research scarily consistently shows that most acquisitions destroy value, and only cost the acquirer money. There is really no denying it – all “ifs” and “buts” have been raised, examined and rebutted – about 70 percent of acquisitions fail. That is because acquirers are usually inclined to overpay (under pressure from bankers, the press and their own adrenaline; a take-over premium of 60-80 percent is really nothing unusual) and because managers systematically overestimate their potential for value creation; integration is often much harder to pull off than one thinks and “synergies” carry you only so far. So far the (familiar) bad news.

Slightly to my surprise though – although not unwelcome – over the past years a few studies have emerged that managed to identify categories of acquisitions which on average do create surplus value. And the first category identified is actually quite a sizeable one: the acquisition of private firms. Pretty much all of the research on M&A is conducted on public firms; that is, firms listed on the stock market. And that is understandable because we simply have much more information on them; because they’re public firms, they more consistently gather and report data and, of course, share price data is available. Hence, we can examine them better.

Professors Laurence Capron from INSEAD and Jung-Chin Shen from York University managed to obtain data on a large number of private deals and, guess what, in contrast to the public deals they examined, these did create some value! Where the take-over of a public target made the share price of the average acquirer fall by about 1 percent; the acquisition of a private target raised it by an average of 4 percent. That may not seem overly impressive to you but it’s really quite a bit of peanuts if you calculate its monetary equivalent – certainly in comparison to the abysmal take-over track record of public deals.

But how come these private take-overs do appear to create some value? Well, that’s a bit of speculation, but Laurence and Jung-Chin had an informed suspicion: information asymmetry. Because, by definition, information about private firms is usually not publicly available, there would also be much fewer buyers aware of the juicy take-over target, and that it was possibly available at a bargain. Consequently, there were fewer bidders and more opportunity for value creation for the eventual acquirer.

Consequently, private deals usually do better than public ones. They might be a bit murkier, hidden and not as glamorous, but hey, they actually make you some dosh!

We Have a Winner....

And the winner is......

The Baking Bride!!!!

Her fave characters are Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head:o) Love it!!

Make sure to shoot me an email with your address so I can get you your DVD....and thanks to all of you who participated in this giveaway....

Can't wait until the next one:o)

Board and Batten Bar

This was our project last weekend. The hubs was the man power behind this project. I was more than willing to hand it over after all the heartache I went thru working on the Dining Room. This took a few hours of work and we already had the supplies on hand so there wasn't any extra cost....finally a project that didn't require a trip to Lowes;o)

This is the before. I shared it with you guys the other day.

 The walls were a creamy yellow color with hints of Cheeto fingerprints dispersed thru out:o)  

I really love how it turned out. The hubs did an excellent job hanging the batten and I did a pretty stinkin' good job painting;o)

 Now if you'll notice, there are only 2 chairs sitting there. I am waiting for my new bar stools to get here so that I will have a total of 4. I really hope they get here before Sunday. We are having a White Elephant Christmas party at our house then. Can't wait!! 

On another note....the winner of the Toy Story 3 DVD will be announced tonight. Thanks for all the participation!

The looks of a leader

Attractive people are generally seen as more competent and fit for their job. For example, experiments using headshot photographs of people mixed with random CVs generally show that people rated as physically more attractive also receive higher ratings in terms of “job competence”. Men deemed to be handsome are more likely to be regarded good business leaders. Yet, we know that, at the same time, for example intelligence and physical attractiveness don’t correlate (positively or negatively!). Hence, it is purely a physical preference; and nothing else.

The most striking example and evidence of this I found was not in an experiment on business leaders but from an experiment on political leaders – although I am sure the situation won’t be much different for business leaders.

Two researchers from the faculty of business and economics at the University of Lausanne - John Antonakis and Olaf Dalgas – ran an experiment in which they gave 684 people in Switzerland photographs – and nothing else – of the pairs of faces (the winner and runner-up) from the run-off stages of the 2002 French parliamentary election. These Swiss people would never have seen and did not know anything about these sets of two candidates. Subsequently they asked them “who do you think will win this election?” In 72 percent of the cases, having seen only the two photographs, people predicted the results of the elections correctly… That’s probably a lot better than most political analysts.

Then they got a little mischievous; they gave the photographs to 681 children and told them “we are going to play boat; who do you want as captain of our ship?” In 71 percent of the cases, the children’s’ choice correctly predicted the winner of the local French parliamentary elections.

We pretend – mostly to ourselves – when selecting a job market candidate, filling out a ballot, or choosing a leader, that we carefully weigh the pros and cons, assess someone’s experience and competence, and make a well-informed rational choice. Yet, in reality, at the end of the day, we’re all just playing boat.

Kitchen Chairs Reveal and a Giveaway

Giveaway announced at the bottom of the post

 Last week I shared with you my Christmas decorations. I am still "tweaking" them. We are supposed to be apart of our neighborhood's Holiday Walk this year and I don't want to disappoint;o) Anyway, I showed you the "new-to-us" chairs at the kitchen table. I wanted to give you a close up of what I did.

I found this set on Craigslist for $40. I was so happy to find them. S.R. and E destroyed the other set b/c they have an issue with sitting on their hind parts and the chairs were hitting the floor and smashing to bits. The seat covers were atrocious. Very old and dusty. I think I even found a creepy crawly in one, so they went in the garbage.

 Using grain sacks, whether vintage or vintage looking, in home decor is very popular right now, and I had to jump on the bandwagon:o) I purchased my canvas from Lowes. (You wouldn't believe how cheap it is.) I covered the seat with the canvas. I then painted 3 stripes down the center of the seat with black acrylic paint. Super easy!  I will be making curtains to go over the kitchen windows with the left over canvas this week. Can't wait. Those poor windows look so barren right now.

Anyway, to keep these chairs in the condition that they are in right now, I put some more clear vinyl on them. Easy to clean and all of our guests won't be afraid to sit on the chairs for fear of ruining their pants:o) Sounds a little "Grandma-ish" you say? I think not..with 2 children under the age of 5 it's imperative since only 30% of the food that they fork actually goes IN their mouths:o)

 We have also been working on the area under the bar. This is the before picture. I will share with you guys the "after" within the next couple of days. 

I was hoping to catch all the nasty stains under the bar to show you why I was so excited about having this area redone...however the sun was shining brightly that day:o)

So I said that I wanted to do a giveaway. I have hit 150 followers...YAY! Big number round these parts:o) Since it's the season of giving, I thought I would give you guys a chance to win something fun...well at least I think it's fun:o)

I have a Toy Story 3 DVD to giveaway to one lucky follower.

This Giveaway is now closed...thank you for your participation!!!

Here's how to enter:

1st Entry: Be a follower or become a follower of Fussy Monkey Business and let me know that you are

2nd Entry: Tell all your Facebook buddies about this giveaway and ask them to join in on the fun

3rd Entry: Tell me who your favorite Toy Story character is....(mine is Ham...we sort of have the same humor;o))

The winner of the DVD will be announced on Thursday December 9th.  Good luck to you all!!

Content Farms and the Exploitation of Information

A growing number of firms are aggressively pursuing the market for information by providing material that answers online searches and employing strategies so their material appears high in search results.

These enterprises are providing high quantity, low quality material on topics designed to produce many search hits and driven by the desire to make money from advertising received as high traffic sites. Some are proving quite successful.

Demand Media, for example, uses about 13,000 freelance writers to produce about 4000 articles a day for which it gains about 95 million unique visitors with more than 620 million page views monthly. Its eHow.com site alone gets about 50 million users. Ask.com, Yahoo and AOL are also engaging in the market.

When you make a search and are taken to answer.com, dictionary.com, wikianswers.com or hundreds of other sites providing such information to the public, you encounter this mass produced content. The business strategy is working and many of the sites are among the top 25 sites in the U.S.

These producers and a whole range of similar organizations are producing material in content farms that rely on freelancers who are paid as little as $1 an article or get no payment except for number of page views for their specific work. It is a throwback to the penny-a-word days of journalism in the 19th century. The firms are increasingly seeking video producers, photographers, and graphic artists to provide similar material at similar levels of compensation.

Even established news organizations and other enterprises are starting to use the syndicated material produced by such content farms. Organizations such as Hearst publications and National Football League are relying on them for some content that appears on their sites, for example.

The implications of these developments on the quality of Internet information and the prospects for professional writers are clear and hardly encouraging.

My Home for the Holidays

I do realize that there are fewer days until Christmas now;o)

I hope that you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We had a fabulous time and my eye twitching has ceased for now;o) I have a special request to ask of you guys. My father-in-law broke his knuckle while playing football with all the kids. He had surgery yesterday and they had to put 2 pins in his hand. It is going to take 2 months for his hand to heal and he's a diabetic, so there is a chance for complications. Please pray for a quick and uneventful recovery for him. Thanks in advance!

I, like the rest of you have pulled out all of the Christmas decorations. This house is extremely festive. I am sharing some of the decorations in my house today. 

Here is the long awaited and anticipated tree that I purchased from Craigslist before Turkey day...I told you it was big:o) The decorations are from Dillards purchased by my mother. She had intended them to be on her tree this year, but much to her dismay and much to my pleasure, they didn't look right in her living room. I think they look FABULOUS right where they are;o) Thank you Mother!!

The skirt has fur trim...It is so pretty.

My Sheet Music Wreath. I didn't work too hard on this center piece. So many other things took priority...one being S.R. with her croup....she is on steroids, and she is wacked out right now. No sleep last night and full of herself right now:o)

 Our dining room. I plan on changing out the table decor soon. I have some Pottery Barn gift cards to spend:o) I cannot wait to go shopping there! I just need to get everyone well so that I can:o)

The kitchen table....notice anything different? Could it possibly be those sweet little chairs at the table??:o) I'll share the seat cushions tomorrow.

I found this Amaryllis plant at Target today for $7. I think this would make a great hostess gift.

Upstairs bedroom...part of it, at least:o) I finally got this room cleaned. This is usually where I do all my cutting and ironing while sewing. It's also the dumping grounds for anything I really don't know what to do with but don't want to get rid of:o) I have gone on a major cleaning spree the past few days.

Close up of my little tree from Dollar General. This tree was $5. I have lights on it, but I need an extension cord so that I can plug it in.

The bonus room. Another "gift" from my mother is the garland across the entertainment center. 

And here is the tree in the bonus room. Yesterday the kids and I made gingerbread men ornaments. They are on the tree somewhere:o)

The sad thing about all of this is that this isn't the entirety of my decorating. I still have 2 more trees that I haven't shown you. The one is E's room and the one in our bedroom. I can share those another day. I must be off to go take care of my little ones. Have a great day, and Merry Decorating!

participating in

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