M&A Blog and News
July 27, 2017
What if your CEO or Chairman of the Board called you out of the blue and said, “We have to get better at M&A integration. What are the most important priority improvements we need to make to have the biggest impact on business results?”
What would you say?
“Um, I’ll get back to you on that” would probably be a career-limiting answer. So would “pat answers” about culture, communications and speed of integration. These later responses would be entirely correct, by the way, but probably wholly insufficient for the moment.
July 24, 2017
Chairman's Message
By Jim Jeffries, Chairman, M&A Leadership Council
As it is with M&A Integration, effective due diligence is both a science and an art form in today’s challenging business climate. The science of M&A due diligence has created a substantial body of knowledge around the practices of financial due diligence (income statements, balance sheets, working capital ...
July 18, 2017
2017 Cyber Risk Survey
Published by Willis Towers Watson, a partner of the M&A Leadership Council
One in five U.S. and UK organizations that participated in the Willis Towers Watson 2017 Cyber Risk Surveys reported that their organizations have suffered a cyber breach in the last year with 6% of those incidents having been significant, consistent with publicized recent large cyber breaches. Two thirds of U.S. companies, and just under half of UK businesses, see cybersecurity as a fundamental challenge to their organization as reflected in the priority given to cybersecurity.
July 18, 2017
Transitioning to Knowledge-Based Playbooks & A.I.
By Kalle Kilpi, Founder, Products & BD for Midaxo
Everyone is talking about how A.I. is taking over knowledge-based work and rendering professionals like lawyers or even M&A experts redundant. What everyone seems to be forgetting is the evolution of manufacturing work required - from project to line production - to revolutionize productivity and ultimately enable robots to take over some tasks from humans.
July 18, 2017
Time to Move from Compliance to Risk Assessment
By Kristin Winford - Managing Director of Transformation and Growth for BDO, an M&A Leadership Council Partner
As the recent WannaCry and Petya cyber-attacks have demonstrated, cyber risk continues to pose a significant threat to organizations across the globe. Cybersecurity is a critical business function, yet, paradoxically, cyber risk is often insufficiently examined – or even overlooked – during the merger and acquisition (M&A) due diligence process. This often results in the acquiring company unwittingly assuming risk and placing assets in jeopardy.
July 15, 2017
We routinely hear horror stories about good deals being fumbled badly when handing off between due diligence and integration. Think this is a rookie mistake that your organization would never make during the big game? If so, you need some extra laps after practice.
"There is a lack of accountability for the success of the overall acquisition beyond close.”
July 8, 2017
Pardon me while I point out the elephant in the room. Providing adequate integration project staffing is a challenge whose time has come.