The Knowledge to Decide

On 5 September, Yamada Business Consulting (YBC) organized a seminar in Tokyo, attended by close to 300 Japan-based executives, to discuss the potential and pitfalls of cross-border Mergers & Acquistions (M&A). Leon Perera, Chief Executive Officer of Spire Research and Consulting, joined the concluding panel together with Patrick Becker, MD of Shanghai-based M&A advisory firm Bexuco and Yukuo Takenaka, head of US-based consultancy Takenaka Partners. Leon and the other panelists discussed the experience of cross-border M&A transactions by Japanese firms. The panel shared their views on the effectiveness of Japanese corporations in identifying and executing M&A deals as well as running effective post-merger integration (PMI). The speakers gave insights on key factors to consider when going ahead with a deal. These included paying sufficient attention to human factors, not “over-researching” the target company and navigating the challenges of some M&A

The Spire Research and Consulting Group is proud to announce its merger with   Yamada Business Consulting Co., Ltd.   or YBC – one of the five largest management consulting firms in Japan and a publicly listed firm on JASDAQ, the second board of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. YBC is part of the Yamada Consulting group, which has over 1,200 staff across 12 offices in Japan. With this merger, YBC will use Spire as its global brand outside of Japan. On 15 April 2016, YBC acquired an 80 per cent stake in Spire Research and Consulting Pte Ltd, the Singapore parent company for the Spire Research and Consulting group of companies. Leon Perera, the co-founder of Spire, will continue to serve as the CEO of the group, retaining a 20 per cent stake. Equiteq has been the exclusive financial adviser to Spire in the completion of this transaction. The merger makes Spire part of a much larger and publicly listed corporate group, which is expected to create better access to new consulting solutio