Macquarie Bank bought in separate deals both businesses that operate UK terrestrial Television infrastructure – Arqiva and NGW. Macquarie had two key issues. It needed to plan under risk of referral to the Competition Commission while bound by an onerous ‘Hold Separate’ commitment that prevented data sharing to validate pre acquisition assumptions. Secondly, it also wanted to change its structure and operating model to best meet its strategic objectives, including execution of Digital Switch Over, a major investment in UK terrestrial broadcasting.
David’s team advised on organisational strategy for the end state structure, and ran a planning process to ensure each value creating initiative was supported by clear objectives and plans. They initially identified the workstreams based on the pre-deal synergy plan, holding intensive workshops with the key directors/staff for each of the areas. This shared pre acquisition plans on synergies and mobilised the directors and staff to plan delivery. Plans covered key objectives, key issues/risks, resource requirements (financial/staffing) for each synergy within each workstream.
Having confirmed the workstream structure and programme structure, we moved to put in place owners and plans to deliver actions in the ‘Day 1 – 100’ checklists for statutory, mandatory and critical tasks for each of the programme workstreams. A key output to manage the high volume of detailed and practical task required was to ensure workstream had in place a prioritised Day 1 checklist for the statutory, mandatory and critical tasks required for Arqiva to take operational and financial control of NGW.
Our work lowered risk for Arqiva, putting in place plans, owners and governance to oversee the tasks required. Our pragmatic, ‘Light-touch’ PMO co-ordinated the workstreams without placing onerous overhead on managers.