Acknowledgements
ICM has written this book thanks to our clients who have trusted us to accompany them in their post-merger/acquisition integration processes over the past 18 years. Some have allowed us to include aspects of their experience using a cultural audit and a structured integration process in this book. To you, first of all, we say "thank you".

Elizabeth Robinson, our editor at McGraw Hill, London, gave us her immediate support. This and her enthusiasm helped push this book from being just an idea to becoming a concrete project.

Thank you to the Chief Executives and senior business leaders from major companies in Europe, the United States and Asia who openly shared what they had found worked and didn't work as they tackled their integration processes. Their stories are sprinkled throughout the book and have brought theory alive.

Two executives who are both clients and friends, Gérard de Saint Remy, who was CEO of Alcan de France and Austin O'Malley, who was General Manager of PPG Automotive Europe, helped us meet some of the executives quoted here in addition to sharing their experience with us. Gérard also read through the manuscript and gave us precious feedback from the corporate reader's point of view. This was invaluable in helping us keep an eye on the needs of integration leaders and avoid only focusing on this subject we so much enjoy.

Thank you to the consultant team for several years of work finalizing the Culture Bridging Fundamentals model and pulling together valuable data embedded in our client projects. In addition, two of our consultants, Elizabeth Jardine and Sylvie Costa, managed the diverse players on the project, the stringent time pressures and all the many details of manuscript preparation, ensuring it got done well and on time.

Claire Forgeot's artwork illustrates a way of representing what we do that lies at the core of ICM culture. This has remained constant for 20 years and is one area where ICM demonstrates a "heritage" preference. We are happy to be able to share that with you.

Finally and most of all, we'd like to thank Jill Pergant and Mark Tooley of Flying Colours, without whom this book could not have been written at all.

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Consultant team: Tran Canh, Monika Thiel, Andreas Kaufmann, Lætitia Mazauric,Didier Aveline, Ann Barry, Jürgen Beyer, Chilina Hills, Elisabeth Plum, Dick Randell, Beth Shipka.

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