Company bought - potential incentives to stay?

Maroon_sl said:

My company is being acquired and I'm in a bit of a pinch. I have a new opportunity but I'm afraid to commit and leave before I find out what incentives they offer me to stick it out during the transition. I literally have no idea I if would be 1k or 100k.

Has anyone been through this before? What was offered to keep you around until the end?

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It depends on the company size, whether it's private/public, what your current position is, and whether they plan on letting you go at the end of the "transition". Usually companies that buy other companies still maintain a good portion of the original staff, even long term.

If they plan on letting you go and NEED you during the transition, they will make it know and usually pay your salary plus an incremental incentive to stick around, as well as acknowledging that you'll be looking for a new job. If they plan on letting you go and don't need you, then you'll basically get the same severance as if you were fired. The varying degrees at which this will occur depend on all the things listed above.

If it's a public company, be prepared for an initial house cleaning. Any under performers will immediately get the boot just to show you who is in charge.

ShakyJake_sl said:

If it's a public company, be prepared for an initial house cleaning. Any under performers will immediately get the boot just to show you who is in charge.

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Yes, if your past few performance reviews haven't been great, expect to get the boot unless you get identified as some single point of failure on something.

Maroon_sl said:

My company is being acquired and I'm in a bit of a pinch. I have a new opportunity but I'm afraid to commit and leave before I find out what incentives they offer me to stick it out during the transition. I literally have no idea I if would be 1k or 100k.

Has anyone been through this before? What was offered to keep you around until the end?

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I would think the incentive to stick around would be done before being acquired and during the transition stage. Our software developers were given stock worth 200k-2000k with a several year vesting period as an incentive to stick around a few years after being acquired. Our executive team was given ~20 million each to vest over 4 years to stick around. Everyone knew what they were going to gain several months before being acquired to and hired a financial advisor to help with financial planning.

Basically the same concept a lot of companies use for new hires. Give them stock grants/options that take a while to vest in order to provide incentive for them to stick around.

If you are being acquired by a public company many of these details are probably going to be public information in advance if you want to read through all the SEC filings.

Maroon_sl said:

My job will be going away for sure. I'm guessing they will need to offer some serious incentive for core people to stay so the business can operate during the transition.

The office has about 80 people and we have 180 retails stores that will be flipped over to the new company gradually.

I'm not sure if the company is public. We have shareholders but it's all family members, and I don't think you could go buy stock

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Not your current company, the company purchasing your current company. Public companies tend to have standard policies for how much severance they will pay.

The company I worked for was purchased by a Fortune 150 company a few years ago. They were entering a new industry they didn't have a lot of experience with. Once they realized that they didn't really understand what we did, they started offering nice pay increases to keep talent.

A company I worked for was bought out by a Fortune 500 company after I left. It really saved the company as they were circling the drain. However that company go bought out by another larger 500 company and they closed that company down completely shortly after because it was deemed too much of a duplicate of other companies/divisions they owned.

People who moved with the company when it was orignally bought out did well and it stayed open for about 10 years. Not sure what they got from the last company to buy them before they shut it all down.

I think they were spot on, too much over lap and they lost the owner of the original company that understood the industry and built the business. It became too many corporate types that couldn't ID what they did/made if you took them to it.

All my experiences involving acquisitions, incentives were came out of the gate almost simultaneously with the announcement of the acquisition. The deal had to get voted on by owners, the purchaser had to identify key people would stay, etc so if you haven't heard anything within a few days either they aren't coming or someone is doing a very bad job.

Vilgan_sl said:

All my experiences involving acquisitions, incentives were came out of the gate almost simultaneously with the announcement of the acquisition. The deal had to get voted on by owners, the purchaser had to identify key people would stay, etc so if you haven't heard anything within a few days either they aren't coming or someone is doing a very bad job.

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More or less
When my company was bought were notified of the acquisition on Monday afternoon and our offer letters were delivered on Tuesday morning.

Bargaining has already been completed by the point you find out that the company was purchased.