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A draft agreement may allow you to control the early stages of talks, but be aware that it also can obstruct agreement in the long run.
Putting a draft on the table may lock parties into bargaining positions prematurely, interfering with a search for common interests and creative options.
On February 14, the news broke that Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate run by Warren Buffett, is planning to purchase H.J. Heinz—and its iconic Heinz ketchup—for $23 billion. Joining Berkshire Hathaway in the acquisition is 3G Capital Management, a Brazilian-backed investment firm that owns a majority stake in Burger King. The deal marks a harmonious pairing between burgers and ketchup.
In the mid-1990s, a young JD/MBA student at Harvard was writing a case study about a railroad deal that was ongoing at the time. Somewhat to his surprise, he landed an interview with Bruce Wasserstein, the renowned dealmaker who had pioneered the hostile takeover, and who was a consultant in the railroad negotiations.
It was a fascinating conversation, the student remembers.
“I began to recognize that sophisticated dealmakers play the game at a different level – like a chess game instead of trying to scream and yell louder than others in the room.
“Rather than a frontal assault, sophisticated dealmakers engage in a carefully thought-through sequencing strategy: Get all the pieces lined up, to the point where when you go in the room, it’s basically a done deal.”
Like many of us, this student was hooked by the sweet art of negotiation … and he went on to become a world-renowned dealmaker, instrumental in megadeals such as Oracle’s $10.3 billion hostile takeover bid for PeopleSoft, Cox Enterprises’ $8.9 billion freeze-out of minority shareholders in Cox Communications, the $6.6 billion leveraged buyout of Toys “R” Us, and Exelon’s $8.0 billion hostile takeover bid for NRG.
While you might choose many processes for conducting your negotiations, we recommend the following three steps of a mutual-gains approach.
On August 2, 2004, Barbara Cox Anthony and Ann Cox Chambers, two sisters who together owned 73% of Cox Communications, announced that they wanted to cash out the minority shareholders of their company. Their initial offer was $32 per share, or a 14% premium to the preannouncement trading price of approximately $28 per share.
Katrin Bennhold, staff writer for the International Herald Tribune, and Paula Gutlove, Professor of Negotiation and Conflict Management Practice at the Simmons College School of Management, will present a talk on Women and Negotiation.
Not all contracts are created equal. Some maximize joint through creative trades, while others are barely satisfactory. Strategic wariness causes many people to leave untapped value on the bargaining table. Of course, agreements based on incomplete and distorted information aren’t likely to be efficient.
How would you characterize your negotiating style: Are you collaborative, competitive, or compromising? If you have trouble answering that question, you’re probably not alone. That’s because skilled negotiators typically take on all these styles during a negotiation: they listen closely and collaborate to create value, they compete for the biggest slice of the pie, and they make compromises when necessary.
Sometimes those on opposite sides of a bitter dispute can achieve great gains – if only they can spot the ways in which they are similar.
In 2001, the Metropolitan Intercollegiate Basketball Association (MIBA), an organization of five New York-area colleges best known for staging college basketball’s National Invitation Tournament, filed a lawsuit against the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). MIBA allege that certain NCAA rules governing team participation in preseason and postseason tournaments restricted school’s participation in MIBA tournaments, in violation of various antitrust laws. After four years of litigation, the two parties announced not only that they would settle a lawsuit but also that the NCAA would purchase the rights to the MIBA preseason and postseason tournaments.
On October 30, the Walt Disney Company made a bold leap into the world of fantasy movies with its surprise announcement that it was acquiring Lucasfilm, home of the immensely successful Star Wars brands, from its founder, George Lucas, for $4.05 billion, split evenly between stock and cash. Lucas is the sole shareholder of his company.
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