Nieuwsupdate: Stop alstublieft met brainstormen

1. Advice for avoiding a failed merger
The biggest factor in completing mergers and acquisitions is form of ownership — most failed M&A deals involved public targets rather than private ones. That’s according to a report by the M&A Research Centre at London’s Cass Business School. The report analysed data from 25 years of deal-making. No matter the type of company, lessons can be learned from previous failures.

2. How to make prettier, more readable Excel spreadsheets
Excel provides a powerful tool for working with financial information, but it can sometimes take a lot of work to find the important data in the sea of numbers on an Excel spreadsheet. This article looks at ways to make data in Excel more attractive and easier to read.

3. These 3 Persuasion Tricks Have Been Used for Over 2,000 Years
Over 2,000 years ago Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle cracked the code to persuasion. Aristotle is most known for his knowledge and ideologies surrounding abstract, political and rational topics. Aristotle often dealt with the science of reasoning. Thousands of years later his philosophies still guide much of western culture.

4. Big Companies Are Embracing Analytics, But Most Still Don’t Have a Data-Driven Culture
For six consecutive years NewVantage Partners has conducted an annual survey on how executives in large corporations view data. Each year the response rate increases, and the reported urgency of making effective use of data increases as well. This year the results are both more encouraging and more worrisome than in the past.

5. 5 Rare Signs That Prove You Were Meant to Lead People
A quick Google search of the word leadership gave me about 376 million results. And while it wouldn't give me the total for “leadership books” (if anyone knows, leave it in the comments), the same search on Amazon landed me with more than 100,000 possibilities. With endless resources, the question of the day is “How do you define great leadership?” While I've read my fair share of books, I can confidently say that it boils down to this: Great leadership is about serving others.

6. Planning for Family Business Longevity in Three Steps
In family businesses, family assets are the unique and often intangible contributions that only families can bring to their firms and are essential to their identities. Long-lived family firms always need to identify and develop those unique family assets that have been sustained and enhanced by each generation of the family. Lessons from the UK’s oldest privately owned bank, which has been in the same family for more than 300 years.

7. 7 ways to boost your job search
Demand for skilled management accountants is high, but CFOs struggle to find the right candidates. Here’s how to boost your chances of selection. CFOs are finding it increasingly challenging to find skilled finance candidates. According to the 2018 salary guide from Robert Half, 92% said it was at least somewhat challenging to find skilled professionals, up from 86% last year. The demand for quality candidates is clearly there. But how can finance professionals stand out in job applications and match the level that employers seek?

8. This Renowned Wharton Professor's Best Leadership Advice: For the Love of God, Stop Brainstorming
Leadership is not mysterious. If you understand how people and organizations behave, you'll have a pretty good idea how to maximize the performance of both. Fortunately, we're sitting on about a century's worth of research that reveals how leaders should manage, motivate, and develop employees, and how to improve their own decision making. There's no good reason to get this stuff wrong.

9. What FDs need to know to achieve a successful IPO
There’s been much talk about the potential for Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) this year with names such as ride-sharing companies Uber and Lyft and rental marketplace Airbnb among the names touted in the US. In the UK, luxury car maker Aston Martin, Sky Betting & Gaming and petrol retailer MRH have all been mentioned as IPO candidates, along with Saudi Aramco– which would be the biggest IPO in history if it goes ahead. But whatever the size of listing, some fundamental elements should be borne in mind by any finance chief involved in a flotation, says Geoff Nash, Corporate Finance Director at London-based broker finncap.

10. Maximizing EBITDA with A.I.: Focus on the Outcome
The idea that a retailer must “understand” each customer and their relationship with a product in order to be profitable and competitive is antiquated. In fact, I would argue it is likely causing more harm than good for those stuck in a bygone era. As we’ve moved into a transformative digital era, retailers no longer need this deep understanding of what drives customer decisions. Instead they need to rely on machine learning (ML) to do it for them.