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Pulling together

When one nursery group takes over another, the integration of staff and policies must be handled sensitively, writes Mary Evans Large nursery chains seeking to grow their businesses often opt to purchase or merge with other childcare groups and in doing so have to overcome some major managerial problems.

Large nursery chains seeking to grow their businesses often opt to purchase or merge with other childcare groups and in doing so have to overcome some major managerial problems.

Issues to resolve are how to establish common values, philosophies and policies between the component parts of the new company, how to integrate the staff teams and whether to re-brand.

In many business sectors, huge corporations swallow up the smaller fry, strip the assets and dump them, but this is not the history of the mergers and acquisitions of childcare providers. This is possibly because there are relatively few tangible assets but is also due to the nature of the sector, where the major players in recent acquisitions say the motivation has been to add value to their organisations and to improve and develop their services.

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