There is no better way to fake the success of your business than to absorb another one. Obtaining the assets of other companies is an excellent way to lower the overall value of both companies while giving shareholders, employees, and customers the illusion that you are doing something great.
Before we can get started with this great tactic, let’s take a look at how to select the right company to take over. All you need to do is follow these three simple steps:
1. Look for companies that are similarly aligned but of little strategic value to your organization. In particular, look for companies that do little to innovate or are too small to offer anything substantial.
2. Falsify background checks. Doing detailed background checks on companies is time consuming and expensive. Avoid this at all costs, and have your Chief Fraud Officer make up some details about the company.
3. Lie to shareholders. It can be difficult to get shareholders to agree on anything unless they think they’re getting more money. Be sure to focus on key points like “there will now be two buildings”, “we will have twice the sales”, and “look at all of our products” in your presentations to avoid them asking questions about profitability. Remember, two is always better than one, even when it comes to debts and liabilities.
Once you have acquired the other company, you are now in a great position; whole worlds of opportunities to ruin the business have now opened up! All kinds of patented FailRun methods on this site can now be applied during this acquisition.
1. Eliminate “redundant” positions. Having employees is expensive, especially when two of them are doing the same job. Be sure to immediately remove any redundant positions and transfer the entire workload to a single person, whichever is least qualified. Removing the higher paid employee is a great way to put more money back into your pocket.
2. Have a company-wide reorganization. Reorganizations are a great way to reduce headcount and place higher workloads on individual employees. In addition, these are often very expensive and a great way to waste any capital that you can’t find a way to pocket. This is also a great time to change your logo and confuse customers and shareholders alike.
3. “Optimize” production facilities. If both companies made things, now is a great time to centralize production. Be sure to pick the smaller of the two plants and ban overtime. This helps cut costs while reducing quality and increasing lead times. Ultimately this will anger customers and help you have less of them.
4. Destroy or leak intellectual property. If you happened to acquire intellectual property in the process of merging, you will need to deal with it immediately. Filing patents and researching new ideas is expensive; either destroy the intellectual property immediately or leak it to competitors. The latter is preferred since it will allow you to copy their designs once they finish developing it. The final ten percent takes ninety percent of the time, so it’s best to let your competitors do all of the hard parts.
Purchasing a company is a great way to ruin not one, but two businesses at the same time. It also provides plenty of opportunities to demoralize employees and frustrate customers while keeping shareholders in the dark. With endless companies waiting to be gobbled up, this can a be a great way to help kick your corporate decline into high gear!
