Interviews with experts
M&A From Founder to A Board Member’s Perspective
M&A is very different through the lens of a CEO and a board member. While a CEO is in charge of the company's day-to-day operational tasks, a board member must ensure profitability.
Developing Leadership in M&A
A successful deal is largely attributed to leadership, much as it is when the deal fails. In this discussion, Scott shares share how to develop leadership in M&A, the different types of important leadership skills, and how you can develop them.
Human Capital Management in M&A
AI and data has come a long way and is now an effective way to gauge people's competency and behavior.
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Navigating International Deals
Navigating International deals is hard, but with the right mindset, and a good knowledge of what to look for, you can make the deal as smooth as possible.
How to Cultivate Relationships with Deal Targets
Relationships with deal targets are extremely important as they can help shape the entire deal process. Learn how you can form those relationships and avoid common pitfalls along the way to increase your chances of getting the deal done.
The Legal Team’s Role in M&A
The legal team has a crucial role in an M&A transaction. They need to understand the deal's overall strategy, and they need to be involved in the beginning. Some strategies have inherent legal risks, and it is the legal team's job to understand the regulatory, legal, and jurisdictional issues and obstacles that may be present in the transaction.
Planning a Divestiture from an HR's perspective
Human Resources plays a huge part in any M&A transaction, especially in a divestiture. Separating employees from the parent company certainly has many challenges and complexities that you need to prepare for. If this is your first time doing a divestiture, then you're in luck.
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Working with the Business Leader to Build an M&A Strategy
One of the biggest challenges in a corporate development role is setting expectations with business leaders to develop a strategy behind the deal. Most business leaders think they can do M&A but every acquisition must have a strategy behind it.
Managing Surprises in Diligence
While other people feel the need to eliminate surprises, Joseph Feldman thinks otherwise. He says we should be prepared for surprises, not eliminate them.
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Evolving to Agile M&A at Scale
Larger companies have started adopting Agile in their process. In this article, we will be talking about evolving to Agile M&A at scale with the help of Ashley Rice, Sr. Consultant HR M&A at Cisco, and Kimberly Baird, Corporate Development Integration Lead at Cisco.
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The One-Person Corporate Development Team
Being a one-person corporate development team is not easy. And if you are new to that position, chances are, the people around you don't even know who you are and what your role is.
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How Microsoft Negotiate Deal Terms
Negotiating deal terms is a massive part of an M&A process. Every negotiator brings something different to the table, but one thing is for sure- both parties need to be happy, or else the deal won't get done.
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How to Maximize the Value of Your Business Prior to Sale
Everyone wants to sell their business at a high price. But in order to negotiate in your favor, you have to have leverage. Otherwise, you’re just hoping to get lucky that someone will be willing to pay for what you are asking for.
Joint Ventures Consolidation
Joint ventures are typically more complicated than traditional M&A because there are more parties involved, and everyone has to agree on many items. But with the right approach and model, a joint venture can run smoothly.
Best Ways to Approach Diligence
Approaching diligence efficiently sets the stage for better integration and the overall process. Learn buy-side diligence, red flags to look out for and integration planning with Judah Karkowsky, SVP Corporate & Business Development at Cengage.
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Implementing Agile into M&A
James Harris, Principal, Corporate Development Integration at Google shares how they implement the Agile methodology in their deals.
Complete Guide to Cultural Assessment
Dawn White describes how to best conduct and approach cultural assessments as well as common missteps she’s seen in the process and how to overcome them.
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Divestiture Planning to Execution
In this article, we will discuss how to plan a divestiture effectively to make it more valuable and successful with Larry Forman, Senior Manager at Deloitte, and Michael Frankel, SVP, Managing Director at Deliotte.
How Atlassian Negotiates a Term Sheet
With the help of Chris Hecht, Head of Corporate Development at Atlassian, we will discuss how Atlassian negotiates a term sheet and why did they open source their recent term sheet.
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Turning Deal Thesis Into Integration Objectives
Planning the integration in the early stage of the deal is critical for success. Yet, many people don't seem to do this, which is why most acquisitions don't deliver against the deal thesis. Helping us understand this matter is Christian von Bogdandy, Senior Director at Slalom.
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Making The Most Of Your Employee Announcements
According to Wharton's studies, acquired employees are twice as likely to leave compared to employees that are hired off the market. Clearly, organizations are doing something wrong. Helping us understand employee retention is Dr. Klint Kendrick, director of strategic workforce initiatives at SC Johnson.
How To Build An M&A Communication Plan
Building a communication plan is essential to get you ready for that all-important day one. The impression that you will make on your new stakeholders will dictate their behavior in the next couple of months. You have to be fully prepared on what to say when to say it, and how to say it. Helping us build our communication plan is David Olsson, Partner at BTD.
How M&A Can Be Transformed To Improve Integration
We need to transform our M&A process to drive better integrations. Joining us to understand and evolve our processes is Javid Moosaji, M&A Sales Integration Strategy at Paypal.
How AstraZeneca Approaches Alliances
We're talking about the spectrum of deals that corporate development manages, approaching partnerships and alliances, and how those relationships may progress into future transactions.
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Agile Value Capture from Initial Deal Prospecting to Integration
Integration is a value capture play that not many have been able to actualize. By connecting and validating the deal thesis early, deal teams can improve their success rate. Joining us to discuss how to connect the overall transaction process and optimize the value created is Carlos Cesta, Vice President of Corporate Development at Presidio.
Corporate Venture Capital
John Orbe talks about corporate venture capital, what it is, why you should consider it for your organization, and the challenges you may face with it. John explains how to identify your strategic goal, setting objectives, and how to assemble your VC team. He then goes on to explain the deal structure of corporate venture capital transactions.
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Managing a Multi-Vertical M&A Strategy
Hear from the Vice President of Corporate Development at 3M about how leaders prioritize industries and prevent leaders from developing deal biases through specific team exercises.
The Best M&A Podcast Episodes of 2020
I've interviewed a lot of M&A professionals on the M&A Science podcast, and each of them was a delight to talk to. However, there are a few episodes that stood out the most.
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Building an Effective Internal Communication Plan for M&A
A good Internal communication plan helps you onboard and retain employees and suppliers faster. Here’s how you do it!
Making Joint Ventures Successful
Almost 60 to 70% of joint ventures fail within the first five years. It can be complicated and you need to be prepared before you go into one.
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How to Evolve Your M&A Workflow Using Agile Principles
IBM has been on a journey moving from a hierarchical approach to things, checklist-driven, with lots of individual silos to a much more forward-thinking, business outcome-oriented, and agile organization.
How to Implement an Agile approach into M&A
Google has been using the Agile approach in its acquisitions. They finish faster and have better outcomes. Find out how they do it here.
Evolving Your Corporate Development Function
Michael was a banker who was hired to be a corporate development leader. Learn how he evolved the corporate development function from scratch.
How Proactive Integration Engagement Differentiate Value in Deals
We all hear the horror stories about the failed M&A deals because of the lack of communication between the corporate development team and the integration team. But as the integration lead, what can you do to ensure communication and better deal outcomes?
Identifying Risks in Software M&A
There are many things to consider when you are doing software deals in M&A. You need to be fully aware of them in order to realize the full value of what you are buying.
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Why Big Companies Destroy Small Ones In M&A
If you're a small company about to be acquired by a larger one, you may be wondering how you can protect yourself and your employees from being destroyed by the large acquirer. Hear from M&A pros about how to protect yourself during transactions and what red flags to look out for.
Creating Successful Deal Outcomes Using Innovation
A one size fits all approach does not apply to M&A. You need to focus on integration, be agile, and learn from every deal to keep improving your M&A process.
Cultivating Relationships With The Seller
There is a reason why M&A deals fail most of the time… It’s hard. Relationships with deal targets will help you in any imaginable way.
The Importance of Communication, Due Diligence, and Post-Closing Integration
Selling a company can be a long, costly, tedious process and you need to be ready for it. As long as you know why you are selling your company, you can avoid the doubt that will creep in and focus on the sale.
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Building a Guide to Project Manage M&A
in pursuit of creating the best project management process guide for the buy and sell-side, we posted an outline of what we thought would be a great guide and the feedback we got all over the place.
How To Plan a Divestiture From an Accounting Perspective
In case you didn’t know, selling a part of your business is one of the hardest deals you can do. You have to make a lot of considerations.
Working With Private Sellers
One of the biggest differentiators of working with private sellers is that most of the time, they lack the basic knowledge of selling a business. This interview will cover the most important parts of acquiring family-owned businessess and how you can work effectively.
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The HR Practitioner’s Guide to Mergers & Acquisitions Due Diligence
HR practitioners don't usually get involved in the deal until it has already been announced. Klint Kendrick will be discussing why this shouldn't be the case and different types of HR related risks to watch out.
How to Build and Align a Corporate Development Team with Multiple Mandate
Every corporate development team has a different mandate. This interview covers how you can build a strong team and the different best practices to get the best value out of your deals.
Structuring Talent Focused Acquisitions
A talent-focused acquisition is a type of deal where you acquire a company because of its people; for their skills, domain expertise, or client relationships. In this article, you'll learn how to structure talent-focused acquisitions in order to preserve value.
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