The Build and Buy Reality Check: Surviving Post-Merger Integration

​Summary: Bert Zoetbrood, former EVP of DEKRA and CEO of its global product testing business, leads a closed-door session on the unvarnished reality of M&A and corporate restructuring. It confronts how value is destroyed in post-merger integration through cultural clashes, legacy IT debt, and resistant leadership that turn "synergies" into spreadsheet fiction. Focus: how to triage a cash-bleeding acquisition and make integration actually deliver.

​Everyone loves the press release of a massive acquisition. The bankers celebrate, the Board applauds the new revenue projections, and the market reacts. But the operational reality is entirely different: M&A value isn't created at the signing table; it is usually destroyed during the post-merger integration. Between toxic cultural clashes, inherited legacy IT debt, and acquired leadership teams that actively resist the takeover, most "synergies" are pure spreadsheet fiction.

​To tear down the unvarnished reality of global M&A and corporate restructuring, we are locking the doors with Bert Zoetbrood. Bert is a heavyweight executive who operates at the absolute highest levels of global business turnarounds. As the EVP of DEKRA and CEO of its global product testing business, he didn't just manage the P&L—he grew the division fivefold using a ruthless build-and-buy strategy. He has spearheaded aggressive restructuring in distressed regions like Brazil and the US, and as the former CIO for Philips Consumer Electronics Europe, he knows exactly how to weaponize IT integration to force massive cost reductions. He knows exactly what an acquisition looks like when it’s bleeding cash, and he has the blueprint to triage it.