Merger Communications

A merger is one of the few occasions when a firm has real news for every client at once, and news that is good for them.

More specialists under one roof. Deeper expertise in the sectors they work in. People in places the firm could not reach before, sometimes through an international network.

Most of the year a firm is looking for a reason to be in touch with its clients. This is a real one, and it only comes round once.

What the client wants to know

Clients are pleased for a firm they like, once somebody tells them what it means for them.

What they want to know is specific. Their fees. Their contact. Whether the people they deal with are still the people they deal with. What they can now get that they could not get last month.

Answer that well and they settle into the new firm and stay. The first fortnight is when it happens.

I have handled the communications side of mergers in accountancy and in law, for both sides of a transaction.

Why the staff hear it first

A firm’s biggest client once stopped at reception on his way out, pleased about a merger his partner had just told him about. He asked the receptionist whether it was great news for everybody.

Nobody had told her anything. She said she did not know how it was going to work out.

He left less certain than he arrived, and nothing had been said against the merger.

Staff who know what is happening become the people reassuring clients that nothing they value is changing. They are the best asset the new firm has in those first weeks.

The regulatory side

A law firm has to notify the Law Society. An accountancy firm regulated by Chartered Accountants Ireland has to notify them. There is a notice period attached, so that clock starts well before the announcement does.

Letters of engagement have to be reissued under the new name.

None of that is marketing. All of it sits on the same timetable, and the communications plan has to be built around it.

When to start

Earlier than you might think. There is work worth doing before anybody is told. Top clients are best warned ahead of the formal announcement, and it is worth understanding how they are likely to react while there is still time to shape what they hear.

The website is quicker to change than it used to be. What takes the time is the people content. Every partner needs a photograph in the same style, which means getting them all in front of a camera, and every bio has to be rewritten. Partner diaries set that timetable, not the developer.

The audiences

Six, usually. Staff at both firms. Top tier clients. The rest of the client base. Prospects. Referral sources, which in practice means banks and solicitors. Suppliers.

Each one needs its own message, a named person responsible for it, and a date. The dates matter as much as the words. Nobody should hear it from somebody else first.

What gets written, and where I start

I start with the press release.

Writing it forces both firms to agree what the story actually is, in a few hundred words, before anything else gets written. Everything after it borrows from that.

Then the plan and the timetable. Client letters for the acquiring firm and the acquired firm, which are two different letters. The email announcement. Letters to intermediaries. A staff FAQ and a client FAQ. Partner profiles and firm background for LinkedIn. The website. Signage, stationery, phone diversions, and the rest of the operational list that all changes on one day.

The staff FAQ

This is the one I would always do.

The first question staff ask is whether they still have a job. After that comes salary, reporting lines, whether they have to move, and what to say when a client rings.

Building it with people from both firms gives everybody somewhere to go for an answer. It also brings the harder questions into the open while there is still time to deal with them.

Those are the same people who will be on the phone to your clients the following week.

If your firm is heading into one

If something is already in motion, the earlier this starts, the better it tends to go. Most of my transaction work begins well before anything is public.

Contact me if you would like to discuss in the strictest confidence.