by Bruce | March 15, 2019 | Articles, Business Models, Cultural Considerations, Finance, Leadership, Strategy
AT&T’s long-delayed acquisition of Time Warner finally closed some days ago, and within about a week The Wall Street Journal put out a front-page story “It was once ‘game of thrones’ inside Time Warner: AT&T said, enough.” What...
by Bruce | February 21, 2019 | Articles, Business Models, Cultural Considerations, Globalization, Leadership, Partnership Structures, Practice Group Management, Strategy
Lurking in the wings, if not center-stage, in almost everything we do in our work with clients–and I imagine something similar holds true in the work of many of you, invaluable readers–is the nebulous and unclear, but mostly ominous-sounding, notion of...
by Bruce | January 15, 2019 | Articles, Business Models, Finance, Leadership, Practice Group Management, Strategy
Having discussed the Citi/Hildebrandt annual client advisory, we now turn to the Thomson-Reuters/Georgetown Report on the State of the Legal Market for 2018. If Citi’s editorial tone tends to be rather celebratory of good news, Thomson-Reuters’ tends in...
by Bruce | January 10, 2019 | Articles, Business Models, Finance, Strategy
Two of the Big Three Annual Reports on the state of Law Land are now out and it’s time for a survey of the horizon and some perspective. (The Big Three are the Altman-Weil “Law Firms in Transition” report [not yet released], the Citi/Hildebrandt annual client...
by Bruce | November 29, 2018 | Articles, Business Models, Finance, Leadership, M&A, Strategy
According to the self-assured analysis of McKinsey, there are only six types of successful acquisitions. Cutting directly to the chase, they are: Improving the target firm’s performance; Removing industry excess capacity; Creating market access for services;...
by Bruce | November 5, 2018 | Articles, Business Models, Client Relationships, Cultural Considerations, Leadership, Practice Group Management, Strategy
There is only one valid definition of a business purpose: to create a customer. –Peter Drucker, The Practice of Management (New York,: Harper, 1st ed. 1954); Routledge, 2012, at p. 37 Urban legend has it that a Harvard Business School professor (who is never...