[Jurassic Park] The New Big (Company) Kid on the Block

I drove to my client, a company on the Peninsula, past what was formerly Genentech Inc. (acquired by Roche) in South Francisco, on the same day that General Motors filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

If I had driven further south I would have passed buildings that formerly housed Bay Networks and 3Com, long gone former or diminished competitors of Cisco, and by a location that was Informix (subsumed by IBM), Sun Microsystems (acquired by Oracle), and Silicon Graphics , a leader in computer graphics in the mid-1990’s and a recent bankruptcy participant, acquired by Rackable Systems.Read the rest

[Will Art Levinson Stay At Genentech?] The Answer is. . .

No.

As reported by the San Francisco Business Times , Art will leave May 1,  followed by Sue Desmond-Hellmann and other senior execs later this year. No specific dates were noted for Sue Desmond-Hellman and the others leaving the company. [Update 5/1/2009 : Yesterday was Sue’s last day at Genentech. The SF Business Times reported that she has been recommended by a search committee to be the new chancellor of the University of California San Francisco.Read the rest

[Through the Glass Door] Roche’s Genentech Talent Acquisition: 20 Questions

Neither Roche Chairman Franz Humer nor CEO Severin Schwan have called me up to ask how I’d handle the talent side of their Genentech acquisition. Perhaps they will, but they’ve also been pretty mum on their plans moving forward for the talent at 1 DNA Way .

As someone who has made their livelihood in the talent assessment business as a coach to managers and teams for over 25 years – and to save Franz and Severin a long distance phone call charge – here are some things I’d be thinking about if I were on point with the talent side of the Genentech project.Read the rest

[The Barclays iShares and Genentech Acquisitions] Deals Are Done – Now Comes the Fun

Business and organizational observers in San Francisco and its environs will get a first hand view of how smart – or not-so-smart – the buyers of Genentech and Barclays Global Investor’s iShares unit are in getting real value for their acquisitions. [Update: See Kathleen Pender’s good overview column Net Worth from the April 12th  San Francisco Chronicle here ]

While the buyers are different, the name of the game is the same: get value equal or greater to your purchase price.Read the rest