100 Days and Beyond: Angus MacGowan Ep. 04

Welcome to another episode of Hundred days and beyond. This episode is for everyone within the industry or outside the industry who is keen to learn what's going on in this weird and wonderful world of post-merger integration and what happens with private equity once businesses and entities are acquired. And what happens with the team and employees and so Let's move on!  

Introduction 

Angus McGowan has joined us in this episode, he's from emerging vest, private equity. He's the UK operating director. Angus is a C-level operations executive with extensive experience advising and leading organisations through growth, complex change transformation, integration, and M&A activities. He specialises in supporting private equity firms in the APAC and Amir region, ensuring the strategic growth and acquisition programs are delivered rapidly, then guiding organisations into post-integration phases to ensure full value achievement. 

Background 

Angus started his professional career as a solicitor in a large Australian law firm, but he was unable to find interest in this field, so he moved to the UK. He did some in-house work and gradually became more commercial and operational. He made his first contract with the bank that was doing a joint venture with JP Morgan. He worked with other senior operational members and learned in the process, so the joint venture went well. Angus then joined a Swiss-listed banking company started by an Australian and was going on acquisition trial. He did a lot there, from m&a (merger and integration), target evaluation and shortlisting to helping run due diligence. From there he picked up some financial skills but through the process of being primarily responsible for the acquisition and getting the post-merger operational strategy fully specked and managing the whole process, he finally got into this career. 

Cultural diversity and communication 

Diverse cultural issues are a challenge in terms of communication. It is often referred to as a stereotype. August thinks stereotypes tend to get embedded in the culture. He experienced one of the cultural clashes when he was working in a joint venture. He struggled personally to adjust to the environment and its strict focus on rules such as dress codes and so on. He was not allowed to leave the desk without his coat on. 

Another time he worked in a grid company, which was effectively buying back our distribution margin, he enjoyed working with the fantastic team, but one thing he struggled with was the guy who led the business was a chain smoker. This made it very difficult for him to work so people are always receptive to your best efforts to communicate no matter where they're from or whatever the organisation's like 

if their organisation had high standards, then you need to step up to that standard. Angus believes that one should have an open mind about how you communicate with people. Another thing he learned from this experience is one should not over-communicate. 

Traits of a good PMI practitioner 

Certain elements defined by Angus that will make you successful are: 

• The classic division around your hard and soft skill bucket 

• Bringing awareness around project management and the ability to bring that into the environment 

• You need knowledge around financial management, the ability to understand the culture, theory and transformation 

• Having the experience and respecting the capabilities of people you’re working with and engaging with Post-merger integration, professionals primarily bring a skill and a toolkit and an experience set that you should be able to apply across a range of contexts. 

-Angus McGowan 

Effects of technology 

Angus considers having some kind of degree of awareness about technology and how it’s built,  changed, rolled out and where it is a problem. You have to have a general sense of what it’s all about because if you don’t then you’re going to miss things as well. Technology has inherently taken over everywhere. To make money is more strategic. You need to understand it because it is at the heart of the strategic rationale for the acquisition. 

M&a strategy and management 

Angus's view, Good practice now is making sure you’ve got some real overlap between post-merger integration professionals coming in and starting to develop their plan, getting them in early. He thinks that it is better to go and find someone to do the post-merger integration and not a death rattle, but it just makes it harder to kind of have cleared out some of these impediments and sometimes those things are going to really affect the basis or the assumptions on which you had built evaluation. Post-Merger Integration requires planning. While you're working around valuations, time is money! 

-Angus McGowan 

These were some of the brilliant aspects of the experiences of Angus McGowan. Tune in to the podcast to learn more about his magnificent work and journey. 

Connect with Angus McGowan 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/angusmacgowan 

Links: mergerintegration.co.uk 

2. www.skilfulpursuit.com