Chairman's Message - August 2020
By Mark Herndon, Chairman & CEO of the M&A Leadership Council 

According to an August 26, 2020 report in Mergermarket, (an M&A Leadership Council partner organization), the U.S. Technology, Media and Telecom (TMT) sector has been the best performing sector during the Covid-19 pandemic. With 745 deals valued at USD $181bn as of August 25th, TMT activity has risen consecutively month-over-month since April with more deals expected in the pipeline.

Other media and service provider reports concur, with a noticeable resumption in previously paused deals across most industry sectors. Deal volume and value are still substantially below norms, but it’s time to ask the question – “Is your organization still moving forward to MA&D readiness?”

Our view from practical experience is that readiness requires far more than a playbook and some tools. M&A is ultimately an organizational capability and a business process for growth that must be carefully built to include these key components:

• M&A Lifecycle Framework. Start with the roadmap from end-to-end, describing the phases, steps, decisions, and deliverables best describing what happens and when for your typical deal types. 
• Leadership, Governance, Resources, and Budget. Identify in advance the leadership roles, escalation/decision processes, resourcing, and costs required to execute quickly and effectively. Without good M&A governance, even the best deals will struggle.
• Enterprise-wide M&A Program Management and Cross-Functional Alignment. M&A is a top-down, strategy-led effort that requires superb enterprise and cross-functional planning, coordination, communication, and change management through a disciplined process.
• Functional M&A Capability and Readiness. Each function needs to be equipped in advance with their respective roles, resources, tools, and process.
• M&A Software Solutions. While software is not a strict requirement, it can help standardize, automate, and accelerate the process – but caution is in order. Like any software implementation, build the process first and implement with a great deal of planning and user support to avoid disaster.
• M&A Education and Training. IT is said that M&A success is an experience-driven skill set. Not merely academic understanding, but practical insight, with tried and true “what’s works” in the heat-of-battle wisdom.

That’s what we work hard to deliver for each M&A Leadership Council webinar and training program, whether online or in-person – great insights from outstanding M&A practitioners in multiple disciplines.

Toward that end, we are pleased to offer an outstanding line-up of online learning and development experiences through the end of 2020. Check out our upcoming webinars and training programs.

We look forward to seeing you at an online event soon.

Very best regards,

Mark Herndon
Chairman, M&A Leadership Council