The Road So Far
By Jim Jeffries, Chairman of the M&A Leadership Council

As summer comes to an end and we begin wrapping up 2019, I have been reflecting on how far things have come since the inaugural “Art of M&A℠” training event in of June 2010.

Introducing The Art of M&A, 5th Edition
By Jim Jeffries, Chairman of the M&A Leadership Council

We are a little more than a month away from the release of one of the most highly anticipated business books in a decade:The Art of M&A, Fifth Edition (McGraw Hill Education).

High Performance Integration
By Jim Jeffries, Chairman of The M&A Leadership Council and a member of the Board of M&A Standards

When I established my consulting organization in hopes of improving the Integration practices of corporate buyers, extensive research made it clear that poor results in mergers and acquisitions were because of the lack of one or more key elements.

Balancing Competing Initiatives
By Bruce Fleming, EVP Strategy at Calumet Specialty Products and Member of the Board of M&A Standards

I’ve sometimes been asked what percentage of the deal price should be budgeted for diligence costs. Many deal costs do have a quick rule of thumb, but with respect to Due Diligence it’s safe to say “It depends.” Do you want the diligence to be good, fast, or cheap?

Balancing Competing Initiatives     
By William Blandford, Managing Director at Blandford Associates and Member of The Board of M&A Standards

"Speed Dating" is defined as an organized process in which participants have one-on-one conversations, typically limited to less than ten minutes, for the purpose of getting to know others. I have used this "Speed Dating" process to identify and address the complex relationships among competing initiatives (referred to as interdependencies) with functional integration teams for acquisitions, especially in more complicated cases.