Question

All of the CEOs associated with merger-intensive strategies (Jean-Marie Messier at Vivendi Universal, Fred Goodwin at Royal Bank of Scotland, Bernie Ebbers at WorldCom, Steve Case at AOL, Ed Whitacre at AT&T, Jeff Kindler at Pnzer, and Ivan Seidenberg at Verizon) have been male. Does this reflect the predominance of men among the ranks of CEOs, or is there something inherently masculine about the pursuit of growth through merger?

Answer 1

The trend that we need to observe is that the number of female entrepreneurs is on the rise in the recent years. The number of female employees in the top management of the company is also on the rise in the recent years. The success of mergers and acquisitions has nothing to do with the gender and it only depends on the needs of the company. When a company is acquiring a company, they market only talks about the CEO but there is a possibility that the person who provided the solid evidence supporting that activity can be a female employee in the company. So the company does not differentiate the activity based on the gender and all they think about is the business of the company. Not just male, even a female can be very aggressive and can also think strategically. In fact, women are better at multitasking compared to men and they are better at making decisions as well. The trend is that the women working in the business world were less and that trend is getting changed. The CEOs of Pepsi and General motors are women and they are achieving great things. But we cannot say that women are better leaders compared to men. It is all about the business and the mindset of the leader. So we can easily say that all the good leaders can make great decisions when it comes growth through a merger. All they need is the right opportunity at the right time for the business to grow.