REV Group’sPresident and CEO Tim Sullivan recently spoke at BizTimes Media’s event. In his remarks, he offered the following advice:
- “Do not overpay. That’s a tough one. You see it, you see what the end game could be, you see what the integration could be and you say, ‘Oh, it’s just another $5 million, it’s just another $10 million.’”
- “We don’t get rid of anybody (when REV acquires a company). Everyone always looks at the ‘human synergies.’ Those will sort themselves out with time. If you’re trying to justify an acquisition with human synergies, you’re making a huge mistake.”
- “Move expeditiously. We close deals in 60 to 90 days. We have a saying, ‘Excellent is the enemy of good.’”
- “We’ve got 78 employees here in Milwaukee now and that’s going to grow. Eventually we’ll bring manufacturing to Wisconsin. We manufacture everywhere else, why not here?”
- “The one thing that we had at Bucyrus that I missed was hyper-growth – growth at a breakneck speed. I don’t know how to explain it, it’s like this constant feeling of anxiety. I’d show up for work every day at the controls of a runaway train. That’s what Bucyrus was.”
This story originally appeared in the BizTimes’ Milwaukee Business News.