G’day mate, let’s put some Borg on the barbie


Meet the CFO of Microsoft, Chris Liddell. He comes from New Zealand, which I’m told is very close to Australia, where I’m told they say things like that phrase in the headline of this post. Whatever. If you’re wondering who dreamed up this crazy merger with Yahoo, look no further. It’s not Monkey Boy — it’s this nut. Check out the eyes in that photograph. And the evil little grin. Total madman, right? Story says he’s brought a “philosophy of change” to Microsoft. Well, that’s putting it mildly. Like, let’s change into a big bloated dinosaur wallowing in a tarpit trying to wrestle with another big fat stupid dinosaur. Let’s spend years doing this. Woo-hoo! And yes, as suspected, of course Mr. Liddell is a former investment banker. And at the highly reputable Credit Suisse First Boston no less. (You may remember them from their starring role in the dotcom bubble a few years back.)

Who else but an investment banker ever dreams up impossible mega-mergers like this and then spends months and months in meetings trying to gin up numbers to make the case for why this marriage can work when it’s obvious to everyone that it can never work? Can you imagine the way the tools from Morgan Stanley and Blackstone were drooling when Liddell flew them all into Redmond and told them to run the numbers? Investment bankers love deals like this — just think of the fees! And they never get blamed when the whole thing falls apart years later. Nope. By then they’re long gone and it’s always management’s fault. Put a bunch of these banker sharks in a room and believe me they’ll find a way to make the numbers work. They’re like those two scientists in Utah who twenty years ago convinced themselves that the laws of physics don’t always work the same way and if you just add a little of this and take away a little of that, voila! Cold fusion!

Same with mergers. If this division does this and you do some layoffs over here and you add a few people over there and you play Abbey Road backwards while reciting the Lord’s Prayer in Latin, whattaya know! Synergy! It all works! Lead turns into gold! The monster is brought to life!

Mad props and a free fake MacBook Air to the first person who Photoshops this photo and gives this guy a pair of really crazy crazy Charlie Manson eyes. Bokay? Peace out.