Ann: Preliminary, indicative and non-binding proposal received, page-206

Perhaps HR, though trying to merge 2 or 3 Marketing departments into a single one will be hard.

Not impossible, but not the easiest of tasks. Vocus's head of marketing would be vying for top job, but M2 and Amcom's head of marketing are obviously not going to yield, and will make the case for "the other guys don't know anything about the brands I have been looking after, they'll fail without my lead".

I can imagine all these internal squabbling, and it's not an easy task to just remove all the excess management layers. Like I said, not impossible - it just takes time. Meanwhile, they spend more time worrying about politics and where they sit on the ladder, less about actually building the business. Management has a lot on their hands to deal with in this regard - how to keep everyone happy, how to incentivise these people to build the company, build the brand, keep profits up, keep costs down... all while dealing with increased competition, compressing margins and the share price fiasco partly because the market are an unforgiving and short-sighted bunch.