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Talent Trade Tidbit - Mergers, Acquisitions, Chaos, and Opportunity
Bonus Episode12th June 2025 • The Talent Trade • Southwestern Family of Podcasts
00:00:00 00:03:32

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Transcripts

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Hi, this is Stephanie Maas.

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What I wanna talk about today is kind of an exciting cycle, if you will, that we often see in banking.

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And that's the cycle of mergers and acquisitions.

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What is so fascinating to me is ever since 2009 and that unbelievable downturn in the market, m and a amongst banking has been incredible.

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A lot of it, unfortunately, was for not great reasons.

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But this time it's for some really great reasons.

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Instead, this time around, a lot of what we're seeing is m and a based on growth banks, buying banks to get into new markets for them.

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So what exactly does that mean for you?

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Here's my advice.

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If you find yourself in the middle of a merger or being acquired, or you're actually the acquiring bank.

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Couple questions you wanna ask yourself.

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Number one.

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Do I want to work for the acquiring bank?

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You didn't sign up to work for them, but you know what?

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They're one of their Your competitors, you should know them.

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So knowing what you know, do you know enough to know if you want to go work there?

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Second thing, you have to ask yourself.

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I. Is duplication of job competition for job.

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Look at your organization, look at the job you do.

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Look at whoever's acquiring you or whoever you're merging with, and who do they have doing that job and how do you stack rank against them?

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For a lot of us, we actually do a lot better job, so we're gonna be fine if there aren't any politics involved.

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You gotta know.

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Either way, you need to know the answer.

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Third category, our question is, should I just go into a wait and see mode?

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I know the acquiring bank, they have a good reputation.

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I know who does what I do there or they don't have anyone that does what I do.

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I think there's some value that could be added.

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I'm gonna go in a wait and see mode.

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I actually don't disagree.

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But I do think you need to be smart about it and you should always have a backup plan.

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'cause you just never know when all of this happens.

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It absolutely creates chaos in the market.

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For most people when they hear the term chaos, it has such a negative connotation.

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But I really wanna encourage you to think differently.

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Instead of hearing chaos and be thinking negative, I want you to hear chaos.

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Think opportunity.

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One of the most fun parts of my job is being able to work a specific niche and talk to the same people year after year after year.

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I get to watch them develop professionally.

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I get to watch banks grow and do really cool, fun things.

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I know that makes me sound a little dorky, but that really is part of the fun of my job and working such a small niche.

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So let's challenge ourselves to adopt the mentality that chaos.

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Opportunity.

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For some people, it's an opportunity to grow internally and get faced with new good challenges they otherwise wouldn't have.

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For some folks, it's the kick in the butt.

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They needed to go find something else because they really weren't happy in that current situation.

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Whatever it is for you, trying to find the good and the chaos.

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Because I think if you do look, you'll be surprised how many opportunities are in chaos.

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