Those close to me know how much I like to work with intuition as much as hard data. I can say that as a mathematician without too much irony! However, any good strategist knows that, to achieve their goals, they do sometimes need to look at what the data is trying to tell them. The recent collapse of Carillion has had many of us asking questions – why did it take so long to spot? Surely, the warning signs were there (way before any profit warning). One thing that has jumped out for me amongst the plethora of post mortems in the press is around the acquisitions history of the company...