Dropping the So-net prefix to become M3 (2009)

Changing the sign, and the loosening of control

A change of name alters nothing inside a company. What M3 let go of in January 2010 was a four-character prefix; the parent holding 56.5% of the voting rights stayed, and so did the arrangement by which paid content was billed through the parent’s systems. That the disclosure documents nevertheless spoke of establishing an independent brand suggests the external name had become the explanation of the business itself. A company standing between doctors and drug makers, setting out to buy physician communities abroad, is hard to explain under the banner of a telecoms service.

The sequence is instructive too. In most parent-subsidiary listings the capital is tidied up first and the name follows as a consequence. At M3 the name left first, and the parent relinquished control three years later. Given that the governance machinery — a board with a majority of directors from outside the parent — had been put in place early, the renaming looks less like a declaration of independence than like bringing the label into line with a reality that already existed. The question of when to change the sign overlaps with the question of how a company wants to explain itself.