Following the Veritas (VDGC) - CGG merger the new company ran fairly effectively with both sides of the new company continuing to run their respective vessels / offices / processing centres etc without any major upheavals, the only real differences were some fancy new headed note papers and if truth be told increase in wages for the Veritas employees to bring them on par with their CGG counterparts.
Problems began to surface when the positioning of CGG only management began to occupy all the senior levels within the company and a high number of good, business focused Veritas management were either forced sideways or downwards or simply quit as they could see the writing on the wall. Once CGG had manoeuvred its people into all the senior management positions the real changes began to occur. Proven, well tested and industry leading systems and business models were either ditched or re-invented with additional levels of technical complications, all to be discarded and the aforementioned legacy systems re0-introduced under a new branding. Crews spent more time attempting to use systems not fit for purpose rather than addressing issues directly affecting production. I have yet to find anyone who thought that OTTIS or SaaproNav were effective, easy to use or beneficial, or actually any good. In fact the former was so complicated the company had to employ permanent instructors to be placed on all vessels just to keep the system running.
CGG also adopted a different business approach in which making money seems to be a secondary concern and it was more about flying the French flag and wanting to be seen as the Geophysical Contractor of Choice (everybody who worked for CGG has heard them use that term). Veritas was happy to accept pre-funded client work during good periods but also to self fund it's own spec work during hard times which it was then successfully able to sell multiple times and generate good revenue from. The marketing people may have learnt mega bucks from this but they kept the revenue coming in during lean periods. CGG refused to adopt this model and was prepared to accept contract at or below cost just to be seen. Veritas made more profit with fewer vessels than CGG ever managed to.
The changes to processes and management were not the only downward spirals. CGG became besotted with changing hardware and materials on the vessels, removing any system that was a non CGG developed property in favour of in house designs. Some of these in house designs were like taking the crews back to the stone age, they might have well as reintroduced dynamite back to the vessels.
The final nail in the coffin came when the CEO announced that "we have no interest in Wakefield" who we subsequently bought, followed very shortly by "we have no interest in acquiring Fugro" whom we subsequently bought all on borrowed money, about €1bn euros if i remember correctly.
Throughout all of these backwards steps management refused to listen, consult, liaise or learn from it's employees. Numerous reports and investigations sent from the vessel PMs/ VMs / DHs simply fell upon deaf ears. The upper management are solely to blame for the demise of what were two very good companies, yet I expect that none of these individuals has faced redundancy as a result.
I miss the days working offshore, the people, the places and the work we undertook (except barnacle cleaning) and my heart and best wishes go out to al those people. I do not miss one single individual of the CGG management, and wish them......................nothing !