Big eats small

Like it or not, this kind of things happens every now and then. In the wild, big animals are preying on the small ones for their survival and in the sea the big fish are eating small fish. The same thing is also happening in the corporate world. Some brilliant businessmen slogged it hard to build up a business empire from scratch and when the empire is big enough, strong enough, attractive enough, lucrative enough, other big corporations which are funded by government start eyeing for a takeover or merger.

A takeover doesn’t mean bad, it can be good sometime. It is a free market after all and as an investor, you can buy over any public listed companies so long that you have the money; you can take over the control of a company as long as you acquire enough shares to be the major shareholder. It is just like some people have to start from scratch to build the business but those with a lot of money can skip that entire long and winding paths and hijack an instant successfully-run company simply because they have the money. Proton for instance, bought over Lotus in order to have access to the advanced technology owned by one of the renowned company with such a rich motor sport pedigree.

The question is, you can take over the company but can you helm it as successful as its original management team which had gone through the thick and thin together, which had a strong sense of brotherhood instead of just the “employer-employee” sort of relationship, which are so committed that they are on call 24/7?

So whether it is in the wild or in the business world, Charles was just right to put up the famous phase of “survivor of the fittest”. But the fittest must also capable of withstanding the challenge of time and only time will prove that whether it is fit or weak.