Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney CEO John A. "Jack" Barbour Quoted on Firm's Merger in Pittsburgh Business Times

Pulling off a successful merger, like the deal between then-named Buchanan Ingersoll PC and Klett Rooney Lieber & Schorling PC, involves "get[ting] a lot of buy-in from a lot of people," Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney CEO John A. "Jack" Barbour told the Pittsburgh Business Times.

Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney's 2006 merger was profiled in the article "M&A transitions: It all comes down to people," published July 29, 2011.

Barbour did not expect to lead the newly combined firm, but as then-Buchanan CEO Thomas A. VanKirk said in 2006, "Jack is exactly the right person at the right time." Barbour took the reigns in 2009.

Strategically, the deal made sense, Barbour said, but it involved lots of cooperation.

"Tom (VanKirk) and I might have spearheaded it, but it wasn't just Tom and I by any strength of the imagination," he explained. "It was really the need to make both sides feel that the firm coming out of it was theirs."