As expected, BCM announced last night that President Traber is stepping down. I‘ve already commented on Traber’s tenure at BCM. What I’d like to do here is make two comments on a positive development in the Rice-BCM negotiations that I’m excited about.
Bob McNair and Jim Hackett will be heading up a team to focus on the Rice-BCM relationship. This is good news for two reasons:
1. Both McNair and Hackett have close ties to both institutions. While both are trustees at BCM, McNair is a Trustee Emeritus at Rice (and a major donor), and Hackett is an adjunct professor in the business school at Rice. I’m confident that they’ll propose a plan that benefits both institutions.
2. Hackett* was my professor for mergers & acquisitions when I got my MBA. He’s an expert in this area having orchestrated Anadarko’s $23.3 billion purchase of both Kerr-McGee and Western Gas simultaneously. I expect that Hackett’s focus will be on the strategic benefit of the merger for both institutions, smooth integration, and keeping employees informed.
So I’m excited about these developments and confident that whatever results from these efforts will be the right thing for both institutions.
*As an aside, Hackett’s got one of those resumes that makes me feel like a slacker. He’s CEO of a Fortune 500 company, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, teaching M&A this semester at Rice, and now masterminding a merger between two institutions of higher education. How many hours are in his day?
