HR aspects of a take‐over: part 1; how to stop the wheels coming off during the test drive

This is the first of three articles which describe, from a human resource perspective, the various stages of an acquisition in the international financial services sector. Views this from the standpoint of human resource professionals employed by Royal Trustco at the time of the deal, under which most of that company’s businesses were bought by Royal Bank of Canada. Deals here with the problems involved in maintaining morale and motivation in the target company during the period when it was “in play”, and with the HR stratagems devised to deal with these problems. Suggests that because of the “people” nature of the businesses in question, failure to deal with these problems effectively would, at best, have had an adverse effect on the success of the combined operations after the deal, and might, at worst, have prevented the acquisition from going ahead.