You’re invited to be part of a brand new in-person, experiential course offered by the M&A Leadership Council: 

The Art of M&A® for Integration Leaders: Collaborative Forum.

This is a hands-on working session for senior-level corporate development, M&A, and integration leaders intended to help corporate acquirers make an immediate and sustained improvement on integration results with every deal.

Given today’s tough economic headwinds, hitting the business case results of your next M&A deal is harder than ever. Corporate Development leaders must focus on value-capture at every stage of the process; do more with less and execute faster on the results that matter.

We think this event can help you do just that.

A recent conversation with key stakeholders in the M&A Leadership Council unveiled some important insights about how this event is purpose-built to help acquirers succeed in the current environment. 

Participants were:

• Mark Herndon, Chairman of the M&A Leadership Council
• Jim Jeffries, Co-Founder of the M&A Leadership Council in 2010
• John Bender, President of M&A Partners, and key presenting M&A practitioner at the Collaborative Forum

Q: How would you summarize what you are currently hearing from acquirers?
Herndon: Acquirers these days do deals with less margin for error, higher financing costs, and at the same time have reduced internal resourcing and operating budgets for integration. 

Q: Who is this event for?
Jeffries: This event is specifically designed for corporate acquirers who are actively acquiring now or anticipate resuming more aggressive growth through acquisitions as key economic indicators stabilize. The fact of the matter is, hitting the full and consistent value and business results of every deal, and as quickly as possible, has been a persistent challenge for most companies. It was that way 20 years ago, and in many respects, it’s the same way today, only much harder.

Q: What do the best acquirers do that makes a difference on ROI results?
Bender: The difference is there’s a significant delta in the business results consistently attained by those acquirers that effectively build their internal M&A capabilities and pursue programmatic, strategic acquisitions in all markets. That edge translates to the ability to make the right integration decisions, focusing on value capture, the customer experience and the employee experience faster and more effectively than those without the depth and maturity in their internal integration leadership and processes.  It translates to synergy capture, market growth, analyst confidence and superior shareholder ROI. 

Q: Our Collaborative Forum is intended to help with that objective in three specific ways. Would each of you tell us about what’s so different about this event and who will benefit most by attending?

1.) CONTENT
Bender: Based on discussions and interviews with dozens of corporate acquirers over the last six months, we’ve carefully curated this event to focus on the principal challenge issues most essential for companies to successfully master in order to hit the deal’s business results on-time, every-time. We’ll be tackling topics including: Mastering Transformational Deals; Focusing your Integration on Value-Capture and Synergy Results; Resourcing and Budgeting for Maximum Results Capture in Integration; and, Putting the Customer and Employee Experience at the Forefront of Integration, among others.

2.) FORMAT
Herndon: This isn’t death-by-PowerPoint at the front of the room. That method of upskilling and knowledge transfer died with the outset of the pandemic. Acquirers now universally expect the basic "how-to’s" of M&A to be imparted via online and on-demand education, with application and mentoring in the field with highly experienced internal team members and external advisors. The Collaborative Forum meets the need to maximize and accelerate the pure gold of peer-to-peer learning in a highly interactive, hands-on forum where each participant is expected to contribute ideas, insights, best practices and work collaboratively together on practical application-oriented solutions to real issues and active deals. That means bring your track shoes and do your homework before you come. We will have a lot of fun in this format, but we are expecting each participant to have something to contribute and be fully engaged in exchanging the best of what works and their best thinking to support colleagues in other companies.

This isn’t training. Think about it as an experiential work-out and exchange of practical solutions that have been proven to work for other best-in-class acquirers. This session will help you architect the right approach to your next deal, with lots of expertise and peer colleagues that have already developed and implemented similar approaches that work. 

3.) PARTICIPANT EXPERIENCE
Jeffries: In addition to the hard work, we expect everyone to enjoy the experience by networking across industries, roles and common challenges. All participants will leave this event with a cadre of new friends they can continue to network with and call on to help address issues and questions in the future. Not only that, San Diego, and this resort in particular, has been one of our favorite destinations over the years. 

Finally, we often say that “an M&A deal waits for no-one.” You’ll be glad to know that we are building time into the session agenda for your day-job requirements to continue. You’ll have time built in to check emails, jump on a cadence-meeting or review a deliverable your team is working on and still have time to fully engage. In addition, presenting M&A practitioners leading the event will block out time to privately discuss situations you may be encountering. 

Q: Please describe a few of the types of sessions at the Collaborative Forum.
Herndon: We’ve thoroughly re-invented this Collaborative Forum to meet the needs of so many outstanding M&A professionals we’ve had the true honor of supporting over the pandemic years. It’s now an honor for us to convene this event and invite senior-level M&A leaders to learn, celebrate and make an even greater impact on the business results of every deal. Through carefully facilitated hands-on working sessions, recognition of outstanding corporate acquirers through mini-case studies we call "Spotlight on Success," panel discussions with peers and experts, and special "Lightning Round" work-out discussion topics, this will be an industry event no corporate acquirer should miss!

Q: Which M&A roles and experience levels is this event right for?
Herndon: Great question! Frankly, this is not the event if you are just starting out on your M&A journey. We built this opportunity for companies of all sizes that have some deal-count in the rear view mirror, but know they need to continuously improve how they do M&A – especially in this economic environment. If you are a Corporate Development Leader with responsibility for value-capture or integration – you’d be a great candidate. If your company has a dedicated Integration Leader function, standing IMO or Integration Center of Excellence – by all means, your key integration leaders will be very well served by this event. Also, many organizations have dedicated M&A Function Leaders, for example: technology, finance, HR, change management or transformation. Those types of SME leaders have an enormous and highly results-focused role in M&A and will be greatly benefitted by this holistic, enterprise-focused view of results capture in M&A.  

Editors Note: Not sure if The Art of M&A® for Integration Leaders: Collaborative Forum is right for you? We can help. We know there is a wide range of experiences, functions, roles, current MA&D situations and prior coursework that qualify to enable you to attend and participate in meaningful ways and get tremendous value from this event. Let’s talk! Please contact: Mark Herndon, ([email protected] or 866.394.3690).