John Bradman, the director of HR at BioGill, developed a decision tree to address a hostile takeover attempt. The tree included options like researching the acquiring company, negotiating unofficially, and defending tactics. Defending tactics involved proxy fights, increasing bond values, changing share prices, selling assets, and more. Outcomes included a successful merger, job losses, no promotion/raises but job security, preventing the takeover, or the takeover being completed. John concluded the outcomes ranged from positive to negative.

1. Decision Tree and Explanation for Hostile Takeover Attempt
Karthik Sundaresan Subramanian
18136931
Managing The Organisation
Submitted to: Mr. Victor Del Rosal

4. Company Profile:
BioGill is a Cleantech company that was started officially in the year 2009 having its headquarters located in Sydney Australia. The company
emphasises on bringing together the power of science with nature for improving the waste water to meet the local regulations and reduce waste
water disposal costs.
Due to some economic imbalance and unexpected loss in business the company, is in need of going as a target company to other taking over
company to overcome its economic crisis and also to upgrade their services being delivered to customers.
The Goal of a HR Manager is to Hire Right people and to maximise their capability and performance[(Hitt,M et.al,2011)]. John Bradman, the
Director of HR who has been associated with the company since more than 5 years and has a total of over 13 years of management experience of
working with different companies is looking over this issue in his own approach. The approaches of him are made as a decision tree and
explained as follows.
Initial Steps:
When he came to know about the hostile takeover attempt, he thought of approaching the Board Members and call them for a meeting. He
thought of checking the various decisions made by the board members about the issue to check the outcomes it can bring for the ongoing
problem. He was able to observe that the decisions given by them were not one tailed and there were mixed decisions of agreement and
disagreement from members for the takeover.
When Board Members agree for decision:
They suggested to form a research team to know more about the acquiring company. Also they wanted to check if there is a profit for their
company on going into this acquisition. If it is found to be not profitable by going into this deal, then revert it to board members stating the
decision to be found bad. Check if the board of members agree for the decision taken. If the board does not seem to agree then check if anyone
from the management can speak with the acquiring company’s head unofficially. If no one from the management is ready to go for talks then
end it there. Else, if someone is ready to speak unofficially then ask them to make it happen. Check if the acquiring company is ready to agree
for merging. If they don’t agree then end the deal. On the other hand, if the company is ready to merge then provide them a road map on how to
make the further steps. If all things happen better, then Merge with the company with no disruptions to both the companies and
employees. The other side if the board has agreed with the decision taken that it is a bad decision of going with the acquisition of this company
then reach out to some other appropriate company for mergers.

5. Some Outcomes on acquisition:
If it is found as a case that the company is getting profit by acquisition then go with the following steps:
(i) Check if a new policy is needed to be implemented.
(ii) If there is no need then work with the same policy.
(iii) But Working with the same policy has 2 outcomes like:
 There could be chances for firing more employees from the target/acquired company.
 There is also another chance that the Employees of the acquired company may not get promotion or salary increment but they
could be secured with their jobs.
(iv) If the acquiring company thinks that new policies are needed to be implemented then try redefining the organisation structure.
(v) If redefining organisation doesn’t work then work on the existing organisation structure.
(vi) If the redefining works, then try redefining the job description and structure of employees.
(vii) If the idea of redefining the job description doesn’t suit then work on same description and existing organisation structure.
(viii) If the idea of redefining the job description suits good then implement it but before implementing make sure that both the
organisation’s employees have the same growth vision.
(ix) Also make sure to inform shareholders and stakeholders about the acquisition once if the board members have agreed for the
acquisition.
When Board Members try Defending from Acquisition:
These are some possible decisions if the Board of Members have agreed to go for the hostile takeover. But on the other side, if the board
members are not interested in the hostile takeover deal then the possible outcomes are as listed below. The board of members do not agree for
going for a hostile takeover instead they suggest different type of strategies to defend from acquisition. The first suggestion is to go for a Proxy
Fight [huConsultancy. (2019)]. If the company succeeds in this, then it won’t be acquired. Else if it loses then it would be acquired. The other
approach is to try going for a Marconi Defence Strategy, in this method the company issues its bonds with higher values and conditions [Grice,
S. (2019)]. So that there are some chances that the acquirer will lose his interest on seeing the increased bond values and the conditions given to
it. If this method succeeds then the company will not be acquired, else if the acquirer is good with the increased bond values then the acquisition
will happen. The other strategy is known as Poison Pill, in this strategy there are 2 approaches. One is Decreasing the share values and the other

6. one is Increasing the share values [Grice, S. (2019)]. So by either increasing or decreasing the values the acquiring company may tend to lose
their idea of acquiring due to the share values. If the acquirer loses interest, then acquisition will not happen else the acquisition will happen. The
other possible method is known as Scotched Earth Policy, in this technique the target company sells all their assets to others or in the other way
they may tend to take more amount of debts [Grice, S. (2019)]. So in this case for the acquirer company it may cause a huge expenditure either
to recover the assets or to clear all the debs. Which may cause the acquirer to lose the interest on acquisition. The next possible trick for
defending is Pac-Man defence, in which the target company tries purchasing the shares of acquiring company [Grice, S. (2019)]. If the target
company succeeds in purchasing the shares, then the acquiring company may think it is not needed to acquire the target company. The other
possible way of prevention is Golden parachute method, in this case the acquiring company needs to give more significant benefits to
employees[Grice, S. (2019)]. So the acquiring company may feel that they may need to spend more for the benefit of employees and can lose
interest in acquisition. The other tactics of prevention is by implementing White knight defence[Grice, S. (2019)]. In this technique the
company attempts to seek help from other friendly companies. If the friendly company agrees then try selling all the shares to the friendly
company. If it does not work, then try another tactical method. The other way of preventing is Crown jewel defence, in this method the target
company attempts to sell all its valuable share of its company. Which may cause the acquiring company to invest more to recover the valuable
share and makes them to drop the plan of acquisition[Grice, S. (2019)].
In all these above strategies of defending it can be observed that if any of the applied strategy succeeds then the acquiring company may step
down from their idea of acquisition. On the other hand, if the above strategies fails, then the acquiring company will try acquiring the target
company.
Outcomes from Decisions
On observing all these decisions, John Bradman infers that there are 5 outcomes from it as follows:
(i) If all things go smooth, then Merge with the company with no disruptions.
(ii) There could be chances for firing more employees from the target/acquired company.
(iii) There is also another chance that the Employees of the acquired company may not get promotion or salary increment but they could
be secured with their jobs.
(iv) If any of these applied strategies succeed, then the acquiring company may not be interested in going into hostile takeover.
(v) If the applies strategies fails, then the hostile takeover would happen with the acquiring company.
So he comes to a conclusion that the decisions are like: positive; negative; neutral; positive; negative respectively.

7. References:
1) huConsultancy. (2019). Hostile Takeover. [online] Available at: http://huconsultancy.com/hostile-takeover/.
2) Grice, S. (2019). How to Prevent a Hostile Takeover | Investment Bank. [online] Investmentbank.com. Available at:
https://investmentbank.com/how-to-prevent-a-hostile-takeover/
3) Hitt,A.Micheal. , Black, J. Stewart. , Porter,Lyman W. (January 11, 2011). ‘Management’. 3rd ed. New Jersey: Pearson. P20-430