Under-promise and over-deliver. That is the way to keep this market happy and avoid nasty surprises. When companies announce a deal, they tend to give an idea of the synergies that can be achieved from crunching the businesses together.
It is a fair bet that those numbers will turn out to be an underestimate. RPC, whose anonymous name stands for rigid plastic containers, bought Promens, which originated in Iceland, in November and indicated cost savings of €15 million a year available, mainly from closing plants in areas of Europe where they overlap.
Lo and behold, those savings have just been increased to €30 million in the figures for the year to the end of March. This is important, because part of RPC’s appeal is