Bentley
Strategic Concepts & Mechanics
Primary Evidence
"Cable & Wireless’s offer of US $ 3.1 billion was $ 1 billion above Digicel’s—thus easily ruling Digicel out—and $ 175 million richer than Liberty Global’s offer. Cable & Wireless’s proposal was enticing—a premium of 12.5 times forecasted EBITDA for the next year. Risley wanted to accept but Paddick felt he could milk a few more drops from Cable & Wireless’s new CEO. He called Bentley on a Saturday and though he didn’t name the second-place bidder, offered enough clues to identify it as Liberty Global. Bentley would have expected Paddick and Risley to choose Liberty Global if it came down to a close contest, given that Malone was a Columbus shareholder. So Paddick told Bentley he had to sweeten Cable & Wireless’s offer. It was a bold play: Paddick claimed he needed space between Cable & Wireless and Liberty Global even though Cable & Wireless was already the highest bidder—by nearly $ 200 million."
"“I was just trying to get more money,” Paddick told me. “I had a guy [Bentley] who was basically sitting there going, ‘Holy shit, I can spend the next ten years rebuilding my piece of crap network while Digicel and Columbus and others continue to pick away at me... or I can go acquire the biggest thorn in my side who have all brand-new fibre-based networks.’ He just had to have this deal. You could smell it a mile away. So I was just basically squeezing the blood out of the turnip at that point.”"
"Under the umbrella of the holding company, the brands Dywidag, Züblin, and Heilit+Woerner Bau GmbH are maintained alongside the group’s main brand, Strabag – the latter had come to Strabag with Walter Bau. However, the entire company network consists of more than 80 subsidiaries – from A like Abfall Behandlung Recycling GmbH to Z like Züblin Umwelttechnik GmbH. At first glance, this may seem confusing, but in the world of large corporations, it is entirely common for numerous brands to gather under the umbrella of a holding company. For example, the Dutch-British consumer goods corporation Unilever operates with 40 brands: from Axe, Becel, or Coral, via Lätta, Lipton, and Lux, to Thea, Timotei, and Unox. The largest European automotive group, Volkswagen, has ten other brands alongside its main brand VW, from Audi, Bentley, and Bugatti, through Scania, Seat, and Skoda, to Porsche."