The Renaissance in Mergers and Acquisitions: The Surprising Lessons of the 2000s

Deal making has always been cyclical, but the historical success of M&A as a growth strategy comes into sharp relief when you look at the data. Bain & Company’s analysis strongly suggests that executives will need to focus even more on inorganic growth to meet the expectations of their investors.

David Harding and Hugh MacArthur

Too many executives treat diligence as an audit to confirm what they think they know, rather than a solution to the problem of “I don’t know what I don’t know.”

David Harding and Hugh MacArthur

[In M&A] it’s essential to formulate a strong, well-articulated deal thesis in advance and to concentrate analysis on proving it from the bottom up. All deal theses should answer the question: “How will buying this business make my existing business more valuable?” If a potential transaction has strategic value, the assertion needs to be backed up with customer input, competitor insight, new industry data and … [ Read more ]

Mastering the Merger: Four Critical Decisions That Make or Break the Deal

Today’s corporate deal makers face a conundrum: Though 70 percent of major acquisitions fail, it’s nearly impossible to build a world-class company without doing deals.

In Mastering the Merger, David Harding and Sam Rovit argue that a laserlike focus on just four key imperatives-before executives finalize the deal-can dramatically improve the odds of M&A success. Based on more than thirty years of in-the-trenches work on thousands … [ Read more ]

Staying Cool When Deal Pressures Mount

Imagine for a moment that you, as the chief executive officer of a publicly traded corporation, are about to make the biggest business decision of your life. Stacked before you on a conference table are the papers required to complete a merger between your company and one of almost equal size in a related industry. Across the table, the CEO of the company you’re … [ Read more ]