Passage 1
John T. Chambers, Chief Executive of Cisco Systems, talks about the merger of Cisco with a larger company:
A merger of equals had a lot of appeal. If you combine the Number 1 and Number 2 players in an industry, by definition you’re Number 1 in terms of size. By combining two companies with good management teams, you automatically build up the strength of your management. You can also widen your customer base and have more distribution channels.
In addition, the merger automatically makes your remaining competition second level. As a result, your competition must rethink its strategy. In the end, you force a period of mergers and acquisitions on your competition.
When we looked more closely, our concerns were raised. For example, 50 percent of large-scale mergers fail. Mergers can fail on a number of levels. They can fail in terms of their benefit to the shareholders, customers, employees and business partners. A decision has to be right with each of those groups, or we would not go forward with it.
If you merge two companies that are growing at 80 percent rates, you stand a very good chance of stopping both of them. That’s a fact. For a period of time, no matter how smoothly they operate, you lose momentum.
Our industry is not like the banking industry, where you are acquiring branch banks and customers. In our industry, you are acquiring people. And if you don’t keep those people, you have made a terrible, terrible investment. We pay between $500,000 and $2 million per person in an acqusition. So you can understand that if you don’t keep the people, you’ve done a tremendous disservice to your shareholders. So we focus first on the people and how we incorporate them into our company, and then we focus on how to drive the business.
46.When Cisco Systems buys another company, its primary focus is on its customers.
A、True
B、False
【正确答案】：B
【名师解析】:根据John T. Chambers的陈述，当Cisco Systems收购另一家公司时，它的首要关注点并不是其客户。相反，Chambers强调了收购过程中对人才的重视，他提到了收购人才的成本，并强调了保留这些人才对公司的重要性。他指出，如果不能留住这些人才，那么对股东来说就是一次糟糕的投资。因此，Cisco Systems首先关注的是如何将这些人融入公司，然后才是如何推动业务发展。所以，题目中的说法"当Cisco Systems购买另一家公司时，其主要关注点是其客户"是错误的，答案是选项B.False。
