看清泡沫 15年後看美國在線與時代華納合並失敗的教訓

The landscape of mergers and acquisitions is littered with business flops, some catastrophic, highly visible disasters that were often hugely hyped before their eventual doom. Today marks the 15th anniversary of one such calamity when media giants AOL and Time Warner combined their businesses in what is usually described as the worst merger of all time. But what happened then will happen again, and ironically for the exact same reasons.

企業在併購之後出現經營狀況急轉直下的案例比比皆是。在最終慘淡收場前，人們經常會把一些明明是商業災難的併購吹得天花亂墜。今年是美國在線和時代華納合並15週年。此次併購就屬於這種慘劇，它常被視爲有史以來最糟糕的合併案。但歷史總會重演，而且具有諷刺意味的是，原因也非常相似。

A lot of people thought that the merger was a brilliant move and worried that their own companies would be left behind. At the time, the dot-coms could do no wrong, and AOL AOL -1.27% was at the head of the pack as the ‘dominant’ player. Its sky-high stock market valuation, bid up by investors looking for a windfall, made the young company more valuable in market cap terms than many blue chips. Then CEO Steve Case was already shopping around before the Time Warner opportunity came up.

當時，許多人都認爲美國在線和時代華納合並極爲明智，而且擔心自己的公司會因此被甩在後面。在那個時候，互聯網公司的一舉一動都是對的，而美國在線正是這一領域的龍頭企業。該公司市值極高，在盼望大賺一筆的投資者的追捧之下，甚至超過了許多藍籌股。在時代華納合並的機會出現之前，時任美國在線首席執行官的史蒂夫o凱斯已經在四處尋找併購目標。

On the other side, Time Warner anxiously tried, and failed, to establish an online presence before the merger. And here, in one fell swoop, was a solution. The strategy sounded compelling. Time Warner TWC -0.93% , via AOL, would now have a footprint of tens of millions of new subscribers. AOL, in turn, would benefit from access to Time Warner’s cable network as well as to the content, adding its layer of so-called ‘user friendly’ interfaces on top of the pipes. The whole thing was “transformative” (a word that gets really old really fast when reading about this period). Had these initial assumptions been borne out, we might be talking today about what a visionary deal it was.

另一方面，時代華納在這次合併前曾急切嘗試開展網絡業務，但以失敗告終。此時，一條出路從天而降，而且聽起來很有吸引力。通過美國在線，時代華納將獲得一千萬新用戶；作爲回報，美國在線可以使用時代華納的有線電視網絡以及內容，併爲後者的業務提供所謂的“用戶友好”界面。這項併購是“革命性的”（閱讀這個時期的文獻時會發現，這個詞確實已經落伍，而且落伍速度非常之快）。如果這些初步設想真的變爲了現實，如今人們的措辭就會變爲“多麼具有遠見卓識的交易”。

Merging the cultures of the combined companies was problematic from the get go. Certainly the lawyers and professionals involved with the merger did the conventional due diligence on the numbers. What also needed to happen, and evidently didn’t, was due diligence on the culture. The aggressive and, many said, arrogant AOL people “horrified” the more staid and corporate Time Warner side. Cooperation and promised synergies failed to materialize as mutual disrespect came to color their relationships.

兩家公司在文化整合方面從一開始就存在問題。當然，參與合併的律師和其他專業人士在數據方面按部就班地做了盡職調查。而同樣需要做盡職調查的還有文化，但他們顯然沒有進行這項工作。美國在線的人員雄心勃勃，而且在許多人看來都很自大，他們讓較爲保守且更有組織性的時代華納同事“嚇了一跳”。雙方的互不尊重導致了不和，因此，合作與預期的協同效應都未能實現。

A few scant months after the deal closed, the dot com bubble burst and the economy went into recession. Advertising dollars evaporated, and AOL was forced to take a goodwill write-off of nearly $99 billion in 2002, an astonishing sum that shook even the business-hardened writers of the Wall Street Journal. AOL was also losing subscribers and subscription revenue. The total value of AOL stock subsequently went from $226 billion to about $20 billion.

完成合並沒幾個月，網絡泡沫即告破裂，經濟陷入衰退。廣告收入化爲泡影。2002年，美國在線被迫註銷了近990億美元的商譽減值損失，這個數字令人瞠目結舌，就連見慣世面的《華爾街日報》記者也不禁大吃一驚。美國在線出現了訂閱用戶流失，訂閱收入不斷下降。該公司的市值隨即從2260億美元降至200億美元。

The business was up against a phenomenon I refer to as transient advantage; namely when a combination of capabilities that at one point made a firm a leader, erodes and is replaced by the next form of competitive advantage. AOL was indeed the king of the dial-up Internet world, but that world was rapidly being supplanted by always-on, much faster broadband. At the time of the merger, half the country had Internet access, yes, but only 3% had broadband. AOL’s business model – originally based on payment for usage and subsequently for a monthly subscription – was about to implode. The eventual divorce of the two businesses was inevitable.

我把美國在線遭遇的現象稱爲短暫優勢。它是指公司能夠依靠部分綜合能力在某一時段處於領先位置，但當新形式的競爭優勢出現後，原有的競爭優勢就會受到侵蝕並被取代。在撥號上網領域，美國在線的確是一位王者，但撥號上網很快就被寬帶取代，後者可以一直保持在線狀態，而且速度要快得多。兩公司合併時，美國有一半人都可以接入網絡，但使用寬帶的僅佔3%。美國在線最初的業務模式是按使用收費，隨後變成了按月收費，當時這種模式已經處於崩潰邊緣。二者最終分手在所難免。

This leads me to a cautionary note about today’s crop of digital darlings, many valued in the billions. According to the Wall Street Journal, there are at least 48 venture-capital backed companies with an implied value of over $1 billion, while the number of such companies peaked at 10 during the height of the 2000 dot-com boom. Moreover, these firms – not yet profitable, not yet stable and not yet assessed by normal market metrics – are burning through vast amounts of cash each month.

有鑑於此，我對如今的這批科技寵兒心存戒慮。它們中有許多估值都高達數十億美元。《華爾街日報》提供的信息顯示，目前獲得風投資金支持且估值超過10億美元的公司至少有48家。而在本世紀初網絡熱潮的頂峯時期，這樣的公司最多也不過10家。此外，這些公司尚未盈利，也不夠穩定，而且沒有經過常規市場標準的檢驗——它們目前所做的只是每個月大把地燒錢。

As Berkeley University’s Steven David Solomon observed, even old ideas (think grocery delivery!) are being recycled in what he describes as a “frenzy” of investors pursuing startups seemingly at any price. Uber, for instance, has a valuation of $41 billion, even though total taxi revenue in the United States is about $11 billion a year.

正如加州大學伯克利分校法學院教授史蒂芬o戴維o所羅門觀察到的，就連一些老概念（比如生鮮快遞）也出現了回爐另造的情況，成爲所羅門所說的一股“熱潮”，即身在其中的投資者似乎在不惜代價地追捧這些初創型企業。舉例來說，租車服務商Uber估值410億美元，而美國整個出租車行業的年收入也不過110億美元左右。

Billion dollar acquisitions of these young firms and the desperation of venture capitalists to be part of the next Whatsapp acquisition or Facebook or Twitter IPO have created exactly the kind of pressures that can cause them to redouble their investments, hoping that the beneficiaries will be “the” category leader and shut everyone else out. One or two of the new crop of hot startups may well accomplish this, but the reality is that most of them won’t.

在諸多因素的推動下，例如斥資數十億美元收購初創公司和風投資本家的鋌而走險，類似於收購Whatsapp或者Facebook以及Twitter首發上市的情況還會出現。正是這些因素帶來的壓力讓他們再三翻倍押注這些初創企業，同時，他們也盼望着自己的投資對象能成爲該領域的龍頭企業，並將競爭對手都排除在市場之外。在這些新出現的熱門初創公司中，可能會有一、兩家順利實現這樣的目標；但其他大多數都做不到這一點，這就是現實。

So if you’re an investor excited about the prospect of potential new business combinations, take a few minutes to check out this all-too common recipe for failure:

因此，如果大家作爲投資者對某些潛在新業務的前景感到興奮時，請花幾分鐘時間來覈對一下它是否具有下列極其普通，但會導致失敗的特徵：

o Untested assumptions are taken as facts.

o 把未經檢驗的假設當做事實。

o Few opportunities exist for inexpensive, low-commitment testing.

o 幾乎沒有什麼機會進行成本低、投入少的檢驗。

o Leaders are convinced they have the answer and not willing to change

o 負責人相信自己掌握着答案，不願改弦易轍。

o Huge up-front investment, rather than a staged or sequenced flow of resources.

o 前期投資巨大，而不是分階段或者按順序使用一系列資源。

o Massive uncertainty and a sense of time pressure.

o 不確定性非常高，而且有時限上的壓力。

Put these ingredients together and the result is often toxic. My advice: It’s much better to take a look at the assumptions behind that “transformative” startup before diving in head first with your checkbook.

這些因素合在一起經常會產生不利結果。我的建議是，在拿着支票簿大筆一揮之前，最好是斟酌一下這些“革命性”初創公司背後的假設。（財富中文網）

Rita Gunther McGrath is a professor of business strategy at Columbia Business School and author of The End of Competitive Advantage: How to Keep Your Strategy Moving as Fast as Your Business.

裏塔o甘瑟o麥克格萊斯是哥倫比亞商學院商業策略教授，著有《競爭優勢的終結：怎樣讓策略和業務同步發展》一書。