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I'm interested in your experiences of collaboration, particularly anyone who has calculated the cost or the kind of investment an organisation needs to make if it wants to collaborate. Not so much the actual costs (though that would be good to know too!), but more the kinds of costs that need to be taken into account. For any kind of collaboration, though the costs associated with merger would be of immense interest!
This is a wide topic as you know Caroline!
Broadly, in my experience, the more formal the collaboration, the higher the costs. This, coupled with the degree of intimacy being sought between the parties and thus the depth of integration will drive both direct and indirect costs. Main groupings? In collaboration its usually the Communication, Marketing and increasingly IT (Web) costs and whether existing teams can cope with the work or formal projects management and resource is needed!
Mergers nearly always need the latter as its easy to detrimentally affect day to day business if people are spread thinly between "the day job" and "the merger". Additionally, nearly all budgets I've seen for legal and specialsist advisors are blown when you get down to the detail in and post due diligence! Pro bono help is always very very welcome!
Happy to talk through 2 or 3 examples if you wish.
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