system "Commander" by all employees, all of the time. Sanctions included a "CAR" or Corrective Action Request, which could and often did result in demotion (lower ranking and sometimes lower salary). Since the company offered salary services as a product, salary management was understandably an open topic of conversation within CMG walls. All staff were required to wear suits, even junior engineers. Management Each CMG company had approximately 150 employees, with between 60-80 consultants, one managing director (MD), one associate director per 10-12 consultants (AD), one quality manager, one accountant, and one secretary per director. If a company grew to 120 consultants, it was "split" into two. This created a policy of management that depended on CMG Group growth, whereby aspiring directors from the consultancy ranks could be nominated by their MD to take an internal course that was also an assessment. There were no AD's who had not passed the 4-day intensive course, known as the Pre Management Training Course (PMTC). Groups of companies were divided into Sectors; these were Finance, Insurance, Telecoms, Transport&Industry, Utilities, Commercial (Oil&Gas), Public and Managed Services. Overseeing these were country boards, and above them were the Group Board. Once a year, each company would be visited personally by a delegation of Group Board officers. Initial public offering CMG floated on the London and Amsterdam stock exchanges in December 1995. Until that time, only employees and their immediate families could purchase shares in CMG, and at its peak about 85% of employees owned shares in the company. The IPO had the effect of imposing the first barriers to the company tradition of openness, since not all deals could be openly discussed after going public, and each company holding was beholden to secrecy guidelines. This started a slow change-over in company culture, a trend that increased when other companies were bought and merged into the CMG name. Takeovers and merger In July 1998, it purchased COMETH, a French SAP service provider, for $4.5 million. Then in December 1998, it acquired Rohirst, a British-based financial software maker, for $2 million. In February 1999 it bought Hamburg-based Partner Consult and in March 1999 it purchased Belgium-based Soft Guide: both companies were systems consultancies. In April, it acquired Amsterdam's Thijssen Information Systems, an information management firm. At the end of the year it made two more acquisitions: Germany's Banksys Software and France's Eurasoft. In 2000 it bought Germany's SDC