Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 868, Mergers and Acquisitions.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 868.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Our website is ESLPOD.com.
Go there, become a member of ESL Podcast and download the very useful learning guide to this episode.
This episode is a dialogue between Marisol and Lamar about one company buying another company.
Let's get started.
What do you think of the big announcement this morning that our company is going to merge with McEucorp?
From what I've heard through the grapevine, this isn't a merger, but a hostile takeover.
But the CEO said this morning that our company and McEw Corp are equals in this merger and the integration of the two companies will be seamless.
Don't you believe it?
McEw Corp has a history of taking over companies with high valuations and a lot of assets and and selling them off in pieces.
This is no friendly acquisition.
But what about all of that talk about our two companies consolidating into a strong business entity and creating great synergy?
Didn't you buy any of that?
Not one word.
When McEucorp is through with us, we'll be lucky to still have the shirts on our backs.
Marisol begins by saying to Lamar What do you think of the big or important announcement this morning?
An announcement is when you are given some piece of news, usually from someone in authority, like your boss or the President of the United States.
Lamar says that our company is going to merge with McEw Corp.
He's making sure he understands what Marisol is asking him.
He says, oh, basically, you mean the big announcement that our company is going to merge, M-E-R-G-E, with McEucorp.
To merge means to combine two companies and form one new company.
The idea with a merger is that it's sort of equal, 50-50.
You take your company, I take my company, and together we merge them.
We make them one company.
Lamar says, from what I've heard through the grapevine, this isn't a merger, but a hostile takeover.
A hostile or hostile.
H-O-S-T-I-L-E takeover means T-A-K-E-O-V-E-R is when one company buys another company, but the other company that they're buying doesn't want to be bought.
But because typically it's a public company and they have what are called shareholders, people who own part of the company.
Often the people who run the company don't have the final say.
They don't have a majority of the people who vote in the meeting to decide whether this company should be taken over or not.
So a hostile takeover is when the leaders of the company don't want another company to buy them.
But because the other company is able to convince the stockholders the people who own small parts of the company and who get to vote on questions such as this they are able to do it anyway.
Lamar says that he heard this information through the grapevine.
G-R-A-P-E-V-I-N-E, one word.
The expression to hear something through the grapevine means to hear a rumor, to hear someone say something that you think is true, but you don't have any proof.
You don't have any evidence that it is true and, in fact, it might not be true.
So you hear from one person and that person tells another person and then so on and so forth.
That's hearing something through the grapevine.
You're not hearing it directly from the president or from the boss.
You're hearing it through other people who, the idea is, have some connection with the person who made this decision, in this case,
There was a popular song in the late 1960s called I Heard It Through the Grapevine.
It was actually made popular by Gladys Knight and the Pips, a female band, and the great Marvin Gaye.
Marvin Gaye's version is the one that people usually associate now with his song.
It's a song about a man who hears that his... lover, his girlfriend, is going to leave him.
And he doesn't hear it from the girlfriend.
He hears it through the grapevine.
He hears it from somebody else who heard it from somebody else.
And of course, like a lot of songs, he's wanting that person to come back.
I heard it through the grapevine.
Not much longer would you be mine.
Not much longer would you be mine, meaning you would not be with me for very much longer.
That's what he heard through the grapevine.
This is a little less musical of an example.
We're talking about a hostile takeover, after all.
Marisol says.
But the CEO, the chief executive officer, the top person in the company is said this morning that our company and McEw Corp are equals in this merger.
To be equals, E-Q-U-A-L-S, means that you are the same.
You have the same rights, the same responsibilities, the same amount of power in some agreement or some connection with another person or another organization.
To say two people are equals means to say that you consider them both the same.
You don't treat one or act towards one differently than you would the other.
Marisol says that the two companies are supposed to be equals in this merger and the integration of the two companies will be seamless.
Integration, I-N-T-E-G-R-A-T-I-O-N, is a combination or a combining of two different things.
They're mixed together so that all of the different parts work together, that everything seems to move forward normally.
Integration is taking two different things and combining them, often two different organizations or two different plans.
Seamless here means very smooth, without any problems, especially when we're talking about two organizations that are joining together to do something or, in this case, merging completely.
A seam, S-E-A-M, is what you would have in a piece of clothing, for example.
If you're wearing a shirt, there may be a seam between the main part of the shirt that's on your shoulder and your chest and the arm of the shirt.
Those two pieces of cloth, of fabric, of material, are connected by...
A seam.
The seam is what you see, the line you see that is evidence that they are connected.
Seamless would be you don't have any signs that they were two separate pieces of material.
Similarly here.
If we say the integration of the two companies will be seamless, we mean, you won't even realize that they were two separate companies before.
Lamar says, don't you believe it, which is just another way of saying you're wrong.
What you just said is wrong.
You should not think that it's true.
Lamar says McEw Corp has a history of meaning.
They have a reputation in the past for taking over or buying companies with high valuations and a lot of assets.
Valuations are estimations or assessments of how much something is worth.
It's a term we use in the business world when we are talking about trying to determine usually how much a company is worth.
Assets, A-S-S-E-T-S, refer to the things in a company that are worth money.
That could be technology, that could be intellectual property, that is, things that belong to the company that no one else can use because they created it.
It could be software.
It could be lots of sorts of things.
It could be physical things like buildings and cars.
Anything you can buy and sell that's valuable could be considered an asset.
Your home might be considered an asset if you own it.
Lamar says that McEw Corp has a history of taking over companies with high valuations and a lot of assets and selling them off in pieces.
To sell them off means really the same as to sell, just a little more emphatic.
To sell them off means they're almost like they're trying to get rid of them.
In pieces means in many different parts, not all as one thing, but selling this part to one person and this part to another person.
Lamar says this is no friendly acquisition.
Acquisition means purchase, to buy something.
When we talk about a company.
An acquisition would be one company buying the other and the company taking over that other company and doing whatever it wants with it.
Basically,
With a merger, we might think of the two companies coming together to form one company.
With an acquisition, we think of one company basically coming in and taking over the other company and making it part of their now larger company.
Marisol says what about all of that talk about our two companies consolidating into a strong business entity and creating great synergy?
To consolidate, C-O-N-S-O-L-I-D-A-T-E, means to put two things together, to combine them.
It's basically the same as to merge them.
A business entity is the same as a company, a corporation.
Synergy, S-Y-N-E-R-G-Y, is...
When two things combine in such a way that they're even stronger or more powerful after you combine them.
Marisol says, didn't you buy any of that?
Here the verb to buy means to believe.
Didn't you believe that?
It's often used when someone is trying to persuade you, to convince you something is true that you're perhaps having difficulty doing.
Lamar says not one word.
He didn't buy one word of it.
He didn't believe anything the company told him.
When McEw Corp is through with us, when they're done, when they've purchased the company, we'll be lucky.
We'll be fortunate to still have the shirts on our backs.
The shirt on your back is a phrase used to talk about when you lose everything you have.
I didn't even have the shirt on my back.
That would mean I lost everything, even my clothing.
I was naked.
I lost everything.
So the bank came and took away my car.
They took away my house. and left me only with the shirt on my back.
That's the only thing I had left.
Or, didn't even leave me with the shirt on my back.
Didn't even leave me with my clothes.
That's just an example.
The bank didn't actually do that.
But banks do, in fact, take over people's assets when they have loans that the people don't pay.
Here the evil McEwcorp will say take over this company, and probably not even leave Lamar with the shirt on his back.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
What do you think of the big announcement this morning?
That our company is going to merge with McEucorp?
From what I've heard through the grapevine, this isn't a merger, but a hostile takeover.
But the CEO said this morning that our company and McEucorp are equals in this merger and the integration of the two companies will be seamless.
Don't you believe it.
McEw Corp has a history of taking over companies with high valuations and a lot of assets and selling them off in pieces.
This is no friendly acquisition.
But what about all that talk about our two companies consolidating into a strong business entity and creating great synergy?
Didn't you buy any of that?
Not one word.
When McEucorp is through with us, we'll be lucky to still have the shirts on our backs.
Our greatest asset here at ESL Podcast is our wonderful script writer and her talent for writing wonderful scripts.
Thank you, Dr. Lucy Say.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again right here on ESL Podcast.
