In this week’s The Insider newsletter, managing editor Gretchen Gavett explores a common problem for leaders: your team is overloaded, but you can’t take on the extra work yourself.
Sometimes there’s just too much to do. In our Insider Insights surveys over the past year, HBR subscribers have consistently reported a common pain point: The sheer volume of work you and your teams are juggling. Whether the cause is AI, layoffs, a budget crisis, all of the above—or something else entirely—everything can feel futile when it’s impossible to make progress.
Becoming CEO can look like the culmination of a career. But the skills that help someone rise to the top job aren’t necessarily the ones that make them successful once they get there. Nitin Nohria, former dean of Harvard Business School, has spent three decades studying CEOs and working with new leaders as they adjust to the demands of the role. He says one of the biggest surprises for new CEOs is realizing that they can’t—and shouldn’t—run the company themselves. Instead, their job is to create the conditions for their leadership team to run it well. He also explains how CEOs can stay connected to their organizations, build the right leadership team, manage their boards, focus their time, and decide which emerging issues—including AI—actually deserve their attention. Nohria is author of The CEO: The Role, the Reality, the Responsibility.
Business travel has resumed and most trips have multiple transportation moments: flights, ground transportation from the airport to the hotel, travel to client meetings, and more. Rather than treating travel and ground transportation as costs to manage, leading organizations are leveraging enterprise travel programs to increase financial discipline, strengthen operational resilience, and create better employee experiences. The benefits are wide ranging. Employees are more likely to conform to company policies, while spending less time on expense reports. Meanwhile, the finance and procurement teams have better visibility and control.
What do you get when you pair American blue jeans with Norwegian sailing wear and skiwear? A company with complementary strengths, value-adding synergies, and growing market reach.
It’s the outcome the leaders of Greensboro, N.C.–based Kontoor had in mind when they set out to grow the company from its foundation as the parent of Wrangler and Lee jeans into a portfolio of three iconic lifestyle, outdoor, and workwear brands. Kontoor’s leadership was looking for brands that could extend its platform into adjacent high-growth categories while preserving the company’s operational discipline and strong foothold in heritage apparel and workwear.
Oslo-based Helly Hansen combines all those attributes as a nearly 150-year-old technical brand with credibility in both outdoor and professional workwear, meaningful international scale, and a growing U.S. market footprint. In addition, the leadership teams at both companies were a strong cultural fit, which helped establish trust and alignment from the outset. Kontoor closed its $900 million acquisition on May 31, 2025. For Kontoor, the main integration consideration was to unlock value while preserving the brand, culture, products, and technical knowledge that had made Helly Hansen successful.
Retail M&A often underperforms because buyers overestimate synergies, growth, or the capacity to integrate. In apparel, excessive standardization can dilute the capabilities that made the target attractive in the first place. But Kontoor and Helly Hansen approached the integration differently, building on a strong strategic and cultural fit that helped both organizations contribute while preserving the qualities that made each business successful.
Helly Hansen became the largest driver of Kontoor’s 2025 growth, helping lift its revenue 21% to a record $3.2 billion. The deal also improved gross margins and generated $100 million in cash within the first seven months of ownership. Investors noticed: Kontoor’s stock has risen 35% since its May 2025 closing, outperforming the S&P 500 by up to 10 percentage points. The deal offers practical lessons for acquirers seeking to drive growth without sacrificing the strengths of the assets they are acquiring.
Making a Strong Fit Stronger
Kontoor leaders set the stage by choosing an acquisition target that matched their needs on multiple levels.
“We were clear on where we wanted to take the portfolio,” said Joe Alkire, Kontoor’s president. “Outdoor, workwear, and lifestyle were attractive spaces for us, and Helly Hansen was one of the few assets that brought together these areas of strategic interest. We also saw clear opportunities to add value through operational discipline, supply chain capabilities, and financial rigor while providing the brand with the investment, resources, and long-term support needed to unlock its next phase of growth.”
After the announcement, leaders clearly communicated the strategy and deal value to both teams. Kontoor brought its scale, sourcing capabilities, operating discipline, and financial rigor to support Helly Hansen’s next phase of growth.
The integration also benefited from a shared willingness to engage deeply to make the deal successful. “When we met with the leadership team at Kontoor, it quickly became clear they were the partner we needed to support our continued growth,” said Børre Hegbom, SVP global head of Helly Hansen. “They understood the business, listened carefully to our ambitions, and recognized that continued investment would be essential to unlocking long-term value. We were strongly aligned on the path forward from the beginning.”
This alignment became a defining characteristic of the integration, as leaders from both organizations invested the time and energy required to preserve Helly Hansen’s strengths while accelerating growth under new ownership.
Discipline, Governance, and Detail
To achieve the expected deal value, the companies needed disciplined execution. Kontoor and Helly Hansen established a structured integration program that combined rigorous planning, governance, and synergy management to keep leaders focused on performance and value creation.
Kontoor and Helly Hansen leaders consistently demonstrated a solutions-oriented mindset, viewing challenges as opportunities to strengthen execution and collaboration. Their ability to make timely adjustments while maintaining transparency and accountability and staying focused on the deal thesis helped sustain momentum and deliver strong results.
Kontoor’s steering committee helped resolve integration challenges as they arose. Kontoor and Helly Hansen had different systems, operating philosophies, and expectations for progress. As friction increased, leaders used the governance process to identify risks and escalate decisions. Integration leaders anticipated risks before they slowed momentum through bridging differences in communication styles and expectations.
A Longer Journey
As the integration foundation stabilized, Kontoor leadership focused more fully on growth initiatives, reinforcing Helly Hansen’s role as a strategic priority and key growth driver. The deal preserved Helly Hansen’s strengths while giving it more room to grow.
In Kontoor, Helly Hansen gained a strategic parent with a long-term interest in building its brand and investing in its growth. The balanced and disciplined approach to the integration helped generate more than $25 million in recurring synergies, putting the company on a path toward its targeted $40 million run-rate synergy goal by the end of 2027.
The deal demonstrates multiple ingredients for integration success:
Have a clear value thesis and communicate it consistently.
Set up strong governance with senior leaders who are visible, invested, and accountable.
Establish an integration management office with experienced leaders empowered to execute.
Maintain flexibility to adjust course as circumstances evolve.
Deliver on transaction value drivers by realizing and tracking synergies cross-functionally.
Invest time in culture- and relationship-building to establish trust across both organizations.
Communicate early, frequently, and transparently to build alignment, maintain momentum, and reduce uncertainty throughout the integration journey.
Kontoor viewed the deal closing not as a finish line but as the beginning of a longer journey. One Kontoor executive who helped build the deal model relocated to Norway, taking ownership of day-to-day execution. That presence helped sustain momentum after closing, supported by a lean steering committee empowered to make decisions quickly.
“Being present in Norway mattered,” said Kontoor’s Alkire. “It sent a clear message to the Helly Hansen team that this business was strategically important, that we were there to listen, and that we were committed to building the future together.”
Kontoor further reinforced that commitment with the appointment of Børre Hegbom, a Helly Hansen veteran of more than two decades, as brand president, reflecting the parent’s confidence in the new team and its commitment to preserving the company’s culture.
In early June 2026, Kontoor leaders went to Norway to celebrate the first anniversary of the deal with Helly Hansen employees at the company’s summer picnic, emphasizing that Kontoor viewed the acquisition as an ongoing investment in the combined company’s future.
Elizabeth Kaskeis the EY-Parthenon Global and Americas Mergers and Acquisitions Leader, Ernst & Young LLP.
Shelley Gupta is an Executive Director in the EY-Parthenon Transaction Strategy & Execution team, Ernst & Young LLP.
Learn how EY-Parthenon M&A advisory services can help organizations refine their growth strategies, perform deal sourcing, conduct diligence and valuation, and achieve greater synergies during M&A integration.
The views reflected in this article are the views of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Ernst & Young LLP or other members of the global EY organization.
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