All pharmaceutical companies look to leverage their capabilities to benefit those in the World’s poorest countries. Novartis aims to go beyond corporate philanthropy to create a more sustainable therapy-development model. By marshalling partnerships and its own people, Charlie Bailey leads Novartis teams pursuing development initiatives addressing better-known conditions like malaria, as well as more obscure ones like leishmaniasis. These initiatives can span a decade or more taking therapies through Phase I, II and III clinical trials, then ensuring the infrastructure and skills to offer them in the world’s most remote locations.

In this fascinating podcast, Charlie discusses the ideas behind Novartis’s access-focused product partnerships with BTD partner, Nick Palmer. Charlie explains how this new model offers a more sustainable path to addressing suffering in the Third World. Working with NGOs ranging from the Wellcome Trust and the Gates Foundation, to specialised ones like DNDi and MMV, Novartis is charting a course to bring First World therapies to the Third world, AND to push the boundaries of pharmaceutical innovation. He discusses specific examples and experiences to highlight this exciting approach.

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John Palmer is a Senior Consultant who joined BTD in 2018, bringing his deep experience in business analysis and financial modelling to the team and our clients. John also leads our recruitment efforts and is pivotal in ensuring new team members – senior or junior – have the right skills, experience and values to join the BTD team. In this podcast, John shares his client experiences over the past few years and offers his view on what makes BTD, our team and our approach, different. 

Barbara Vrdlovec joined BTD over ten years ago, and as our newest Director has seen almost every aspect of the business and our client work since then, supporting clients such as bwinParty, Glatfelter, and Innogy. She also leads our relationship with the Institute of Mergers, Acquisitions and Alliances (IMAA), providing training to groups worldwide. In this podcast, Barbara shares her view of how M&A and integration has changed over the past decade, what brought her to this field, and her hopes for the future of BTD. 

Introducing our newest Partner and Head of our US practice, Nick Palmer. In this podcast, Nick discusses his 35 years in consulting and his approach to creating value for clients. Nick and Carlos discuss approaches and ideas that can help executives and aspiring consultants to be more effective. Having developed and led Strategy Training at Accenture, Nick shares actionable recommendations useful to all.

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Congratulations – you’re now responsible for integrating the new acquisition, and therefore delivering the benefits of the deal. You’ve been given an integration Manager and team to support you, but ultimately you’re on the hook. If we closely track the project plan and manage the work efficiently, everything will work out fine; after all, leading and managing are just two words meaning the same thing, right?
In this, the final in our Back to Basics podcast series, Diana Chiang and Nick Palmer join Carlos Keener to provide BTD’s thoughts and experience on why leading the deal and integration – and more importantly, doing so from the front – is central to any successful delivery of lasting value from M&A. The team also offers their own practical tips to help senior executives lead a business and its people through the complexity, ambiguity, and downright fear that often faces them beyond the deal.

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For over half a century, computing power has been an integral part of business models. Whether simply managing back-office functions or actually central to the company’s business, business needs ‘IT.’

For the same half century the prevailing icon of the IT-business partnership has been a cartoon-like conflict between the two – ‘pocket-protector geeks versus polyester-suited charlatans.’ During post-merger integration (PMI) this conflict is only heightened as IT has become a critical enabler of post-deal value creation.

Some firms build positive partnerships by the thoughtful integration of the two. In this podcast, Jakub Kuleczko of E.ON, David Wright of Stratygen Consulting, and Carlos Keener of BTD Consulting discuss practical approaches to using IT as a lynchpin for successful integration and delivery of benefits beyond the deal.

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Culture culture blah blah. Yes, we all know it’s important for integration success, we all know it’s hard…but what impact does it really have on the ground? And more to the point, is there anything realistically that can be done about it, or is it an inevitable but passing friction that just needs to be endured? In this, the ninth in our Back to Basics podcast series, Nick Palmer and Barbara Vrdlovec join Carlos Keener to provide BTD’s thoughts and experience on how to understand and prioritise cultural differences in a way that is focused, pragmatic and targeted. The team also offers their own practical tips to help senior executives change cultures post-close before it eats your integration for breakfast.

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Having discussed what and when, an equally critical consideration is who. Some organisations will try to conduct M&A and integration entirely in-house, believing they can do it all themselves. Others will outsource most if not all of the exercise to professional service groups, hoping the entire exercise can be done by someone else on their behalf. Both extremes typically fail when tried; the best outcomes are found somewhere in the middle…but where exactly? In this, the eighth in our Back to Basics podcast series, Louise Cooper and Diana Chiang join Carlos Keener to provide BTD’s thoughts and experience on where outside resources can add the most value pre-close and beyond the deal, and offer practical tips to help business leaders find the right balance for their business that maximises deal performance while minimising risk and disruption to business as usual.

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Join Novartis executives Christelle Sanglier-Bornstein, Global Head of Post-Merger Integration, and Knut Sturmhoefel, Global Head of Alliance Management, as they discuss establishing Novartis as a Partner of Choice (PoC) across its portfolio of businesses with BTD Partner, Nick Palmer.
Download our podcast to find what Alliance Management and M&A at Novartis are learning from each other and what they propose adding as a fourth “C” to the PoC formula: Cultural Flexibility + Collaboration + Capabilities + ...

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So the deal is done and the opportunity to transform the business and add value has been created; now the hard work begins. There’s lots to be done, uncertainties are everywhere, and the pace to deliver deal benefits if anything has become faster than pre-close. In this, the seventh in our Back to Basics podcast series, Kevin Knight and John Palmer join Carlos Keener to provide BTD’s thoughts and experience on why a structured approach to managing integration is critical to delivering on time and in budget, even for smaller deals, and offer practical tips to help business leaders find a ‘fit for purpose’ approach to integration programme management that accelerates delivery while minimising cost and distraction for your people.

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