(Fair and balanced in love and war)
The drama and anticlimactic ending of Microsoft’s play for Yahoo made me realize how much I love to read about mergers. Not so much for the news, but for stories that the media loves to tell about the personalities, companies and industries involved.
Let’s face it, if it were just about the uncolored dry facts, you’d see a few news items around the major milestones of the deals.
Instead we see tons of commentary, analysis and sweeping narratives. The personalities involved are often painted as larger than life, with Shakespearean brush strokes.
You see some of the same types of coverage when the media starts a war (or as a I am sure they would protest, just covers one), i.e. pits one company against another (Microsoft vs. Google).
But usually, with mergers, the narrative arc is different because there is a shorter time frame, deals don’t get better with age and they either just happen or don’t within some finite time frame. Also, news about deals tends to focus more on the personalities involved.
There are of course some very important PR implications because , no matter what happens, the players will be judged and portrayed as winners or losers.
In this case, no one came out looking very good, least of all Ballmer. He should take a page from Oracle chief Larry Ellison’s book, Ellison is the master of the art of the deal.
