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 Getting M&A on the Right Track
Beyond the Deal (December 2011)
Based on our experience and the experiences of our clients we have identified five key success factors that are essential to managing the people aspect of M&A. These five factors are critical guiding principles in delivering an effective, objective M&A process.
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 Planning & Preparing for Integration
Critcaleye (October 2011)
Mergers and acquisitions often fail because an inappropriate integration strategy is chosen or – worse still – no conscious strategy is adopted, leaving the final form of the combined organisation to shape itself. When in the pre-deal process should you start considering integration? Where and how do you start?
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 A Meeting of Minds
Beyond the Deal (March 2011)
A merger means a new Board of Directors. The Board’s success will depend on appointing the right people and implementing appropriate standards and processes as quickly as possible. What are most important priorities when creating a new Board of Directors? What role can the new Board play in supporting and accelerating integration?
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 M&A in 2011 - The Return of M&A Boom ... and Bust
Beyond the Deal (January 2011)
Everywhere you look in the business press today, corporate finance analysts and others are talking up a new boom in M&A. Late last year, the Thompson Reuters confirmed that M&A activity in 2010 had surpassed the heady pre-crunch volumes of 2007, increasing 19% from the previous year to $2.25 trillion, with emerging market deals making up 17% of transactions.
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 Expanding Your Business into India
Beyond the Deal (November 2010)
This presentation is taken from a keynote that Divya Modi, Associate at Beyond the Deal gave at a conference for directors looking to enter into emerging markets. Divya discusses practical tips for businesses to consider when entering into the Indian market - the economic landscape, cultural features of India and her own experience of leading Guardian Media Group's entry strategy into India.
Although India is growing quickly, it remains a lower-middle income country. Wealth is concentrated in the largest cities, while the middle class is growing rapidly; a third of the population lives below the poverty line. When looking to enter India there are several aspects to consider…
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 Orchestrating Success
Beyond the Deal (June 2010)
Integration is one of the most comprehensive types of change that any business undertakes, and success is driven by communication, collaboration, compromise, and mutual support; all leading to the famous (and famously-elusive) ‘1+1=3’. It requires not just a high level of capability and commitment from business leaders as individuals, it also demands strong, highly- performing management teams from the top down.
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 Is your deal delivering?
Beyond the Deal (February 2010)
Behind most organisational restructuring and turnaround projects are usually found an acquisition (or several) in which integration was not conducted, not conducted well, or not completed. In this article, Beyond the Deal explores ways to identify, accelerate and recover underperforming acquisitions.
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 Smoke and mirrors
Beyond the Deal (November 2009)
Studies consistently show that the main reason acquired businesses fail to deliver the value expected is due to cultural issues. Nevertheless, recent research also confirms that cultural differences identified pre-close rarely prevent that deal from completing, even when differences are acknowledged to be significant. Beyond the Deal, in association with MARC, provides a different perspective on how to reduce the impact of post-deal cultural differences before closing the deal.
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 Getting serious, playing for keeps
Beyond the Deal (June 2009)
Results and analysis from Beyond the Deal's six month investigation into acquisition & integration practices, and how they are changing in the post-crunch economy.
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 Cheap at half the price...?
Mergers & Acquisitions/Beyond the Deal (May 2009)
For those with access to the funding, the current market provides a golden opportunity to acquire distressed or bankrupt businesses at knock-down prices, and consolidation of such firms is already well-underway in many sectors. Some basics havenít changed, however: A great price does not necessarily guarantee a good acquisition, and many have found out the hard way that using a distressed acquisition to improve their business performance still depends on business fundamentals, and your ability to improve them once the deal has closed.
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 Emerging Market Acquisitions
Criticaleye/Beyond the Deal (April 2009)
While the jury remains out regarding the ultimate impact the current global recession will have on the economies of India, China, and other emerging markets, the evidence suggests that, for the next few years at least, emerging market firms will be at least as aggressive, if not more so, in acquiring struggling Western businesses and assets to further their emergence as global players. This has significant implications to integration strategy and execution.
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 Designing a New Business Model
Acquisitions Monthly/Beyond the Deal (April 2009)
Whether driven by a recent deal, a need to consolidate several past acquisitions that have been ineffectively integrated, or to reposition the business for the new world ahead, many companies are likely to undertake some kind of organisational restructuring in the coming years. When it goes wrong, the problem sometimes lies not in poor execution, nor even in the implementation of the wrong business model, but rather in a fundamentally-flawed collaborative design process.
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 Making a Safe Haven Safer
IFR Buyouts Europe (March 2009)
Every day, it seems, we hear of the latest consequences of the bursting bubble that has sent waves spreading in all directions. As many private equity funds
adjust to a longer-term focus, infrastructure assets and businesses are certainly one possible safe haven. Peter Westwood discusses.
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 Connecting the Dots
Acquisitions Monthly/Beyond the Deal (March 2009)
As the commercial climate worsens, we're observing an interesting dynamic emerge in mergers and acquisitions. The opportunity to buy distressed businesses is tempting many into a programme of multiple quick-fire deals: Provided they are faster at identifying, acquiring and integrating, they may look back on 2009 as the year they used M&A to pull ahead of the pack.
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 Deal or No Deal
Project (January 2009)
Without an end-to-end approach that sees acquisition and integration as a single initiative, and a structured, rigorous approach to execution, businesses will continue to find longer-term acquisition objectives, and even more tactical operational synergies, hard to achieve and sustain. This is especially true in a world in which firms can no longer depend on underlying revenue or asset value growth to hide the results of a poor integration.
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 Acquisiton Integration - Just Another Project?
Beyond the Deal (January 2009)
Full length version of the article "Deal or No Deal" - published in Project (January 2009)
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 Post Merger Integration in 2009 - Harder, Faster, Smarter?
Acquisitions Monthly (December 2008)
In the new world of mergers & acquisitions, will the ësofterí aspects traditionally important to a successful integration take a back seat to ëhardí restructuring activities such as headcount reduction, process improvement and systems integration? Beyond the Deal is investigating the likely impact of the financial & commercial environment on acquisition and post-deal integration practices.
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 Towards an inter-model sustainable future?
IFR Buyouts (November 2008)
The industry's key players are shifting the balance away from roads, developing greater inter-modality, improving safety and striving for a more sustainable, user-oriented future. Despite this, the current portfolio of road improvement schemes in the UK alone contains plans to spend £12bn over the next two years, while the debate on the pros and cons of toll roads continues. Ruth Murray-Webster discusses.
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 Support Service Acquisitions
Acquisitions Monthly (October 2008)
Deal volumes in support services have not let up despite the liquidity crisis. These are businesses with resilient characteristics, and diverse end-customers that continue to be bought and sold. Activity in areas such as oil and gas services has even intensified. Sarah Young of ThomsonReuters reports, including "M&A integration of business support services – the hard or soft option?" a Beyond the Deal point of view.
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 Focus on TMT - The Global Game of Numbers
Acquisitions Monthly (September 2008)
"European telecoms companies are facing slowing growth at home, forcing them to find new subscribers in Asia and Africa. But that is putting them head-to-head against the Chinese, the Russians and the sovereign wealth funds of the Middle East when it comes to making acquisitions in emerging markets.
Adam Durchslag of ThomsonReuters reports, with "M&A Integration of Emerging Markets" a Beyond the Deal point of view on TMT markets."
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 Regulatory Takeover Tactics
Acquisitions Monthly (July 2008)
"Within the borders of the European Union, the tactics that a company must employ to succeed in an acquisition vary from one country to the next. This is not what one would expect when the European Takeover Directive of 2004, which took 30 years to create, was meant to have harmonised M&A across member states.
Adam Durchslag of ThomsonReuters reports, including "How Regulators Affect Completed Deals" a Beyond the Deal point of view."
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 Focus on Pharmaceuticals - Losing their Grip
Acquisitions Monthly (June 2008)
"Times are tough for pharmaceutical companies. The industry landscape is changing as new drug development increasingly comes from biotechs and pharmas morphing into acquisitive sales and marketing giants. Sarah Young of ThomsonReuters reports, including "Less Bricks and Mortar, more Cement and Copper" a Beyond the deal point of view on integration in the pharmaceuticals and healthcare sector."
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 Integrated Thinking - Integrating IT
Beyond the Deal (2008)
"While IT rarely derails post-deal integration, it often requires significant amounts of time, effort, and money to integrate – sometimes more than all other integration efforts combined. This level of immediate expenditure is rarely justified by the contribution it makes to integration success or delivery of post-deal value.
In this issue of Integrated Thinking, Beyond the Deal explores how the demands of IT integration can be effectively prioritised."
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 Death of a Merger
Acquisitions Monthly (May 2008)
"Death of a Salesman was Arthur Millerís classic caustic attack on the American Dream. He may have written it 60 years ago, but sub-prime mortgage salesmen would see similarities between Millerís play and their own lives. They unscrupulously sold a load of sub-prime mor tgages to unsuspecting Americans, leading to a global liquidity crisis that is hampering M&A deal flow and highlighting the importance of getting absolutely right the post-merger phase of integrating two companies.
Adam Durchslag of ThomsonReuters reports, including "Cultural Integration - Paper Tiger or Stalking Horse?" a Beyond the Deal point of view on how the established view of how to tackle cultural integration is shifting as non-Western businesses increasingly take a driving seat."
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 Integrated Thinking - Measuring Success
Beyond the Deal (2008)
"While measuring the health of an ongoing business is relatively straightforward, determining the long-term business impact of a merger or acquisition is far less so.
In this issue of Integrated Thinking, Beyond the Deal considers some ways of evaluating integration success to help decision-making during the process, and to inform plans for the next one."
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 M&A Integration Best Practice Benchmarking Report
Mergermarket (2007)
"The spotlight has fallen once again on the need to conduct post-deal integration quickly and effectively, and to demonstrate a protection and enhancement of business and shareholder value. A significant difference between the current and forecasted M&A market and the ‘M&A bubble’ of the late 90s is the performance of the capital markets: in the past, a bullish global market all but guaranteed a rise in shareholder value, in many ways disguising how effectively integration served to build a strong underlying foundation for the business. This is no longer true - and the market is more aware than ever of M&A that does not deliver value.
This report, the result of a research collaboration between Mergermarket and Beyond the Deal, provides the reader with an insight into the integration experiences and views of senior European corporates who have carried out M&A programmes in recent years. We explore their rationale for and approach to M&A integration, and illuminate some key factors in determining a successful merger."
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 Integration Due Diligence
Beyond the Deal (2005)
"Mergers & acquisitions typically do not achieve their intended purpose, often because the two firms fail to integrate effectively. The key to getting it right is knowing in advance what integration will entail, and discovering any show-stoppers well before the contract is signed. Both can be achieved by conducting pre-deal due diligence on a much broader scope than is required just to support the deal itself.
Being the right target depends on much more than just good numbers. In this paper, Beyond the Deal discusses how to conduct due diligence in a way that supports the achievement of real post-deal value by investigating areas such as culture, business process, organisational structure, IT, and more. It also outlines approaches to gathering this information quickly and accurately, and provides information on how to assess it once available."
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 Transatlantic Mergers & Acquisitions
Beyond the Deal (2005)
"Despite the currently challenging economic climate, M&A is still considered one of the best ways of delivering high-speed growth. This is especially true for British and American firms, who continue to see each other as the ideal first step into international business. True as this may be, business leaders driving a strategy of Transatlantic M&A sometimes do so in the belief that narrowing cultural differences and improved travel and communications links make a union across the pond as easy as one within their own borders. This remains far from the truth.
In this paper, Beyond the Deal discusses the specific challenges and opportunities facing transatlantic mergers and acquisitions. Key differences between US and British integration practices and legislative constraints are outlined, and practical tips are provided on how to approach all aspects of the post-M&A activity."
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 Securing Value from Mergers & Acquisitions
Beyond the Deal (2005)
"It is an established fact - well over half of all mergers and acquisitions fail to achieve their anticipated benefits. What is less well known is that a majority of these failures are because of poor post-acquisition integration. Why is successful integration so elusive? Several obvious trouble spots tend to quickly appear but these are usually only symptoms of deeper issues.
While there is no way to avoid the complicated nature of M&A integration, the effort required to conduct a successful integration does decrease significantly in smaller organisations. In this paper, Beyond the Deal describes how integration impacts the four key components within any organisation: people, processes, organisation, and technology. Important principles central to all successful M&A integrations are provided, and the paper concludes with an overview on how to apply each in a practical, realistic manner."
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 Cultural Due Diligence for Mergers & Acquisitions
Beyond the Deal (2004)
"The skills to assess cultural diversity pre-deal appear to be, and indeed are, common-sense, and can be used to a very large extent before completion of any M&A deal. With some investment in time, cultural differences between potential M&A partners can be understood, and their impact on post-deal integration assessed.
Following on from the thinking of Beyond the Deal's paper, Cultural Diversity - Can it be Managed?, this paper gives an overview of the importance of undertaking cultural due diligence, and provides a practical approach based on our real experience to carrying out this work using proven business diagnostic tools rather than commonly-applied social anthropological methods."
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 Strategies for Successful M&A Integration
Beyond the Deal (2004)
"Deals often fail to meet their objectives as a result of poor intercultural synergy. Cultural diversity can be proactively managed, but a shift in mindset for many executives is required to treat this aspect of any alliance as seriously as the strategic, financial and legal issues.
Authored by Ruth Murray-Webster one of the Beyond the Deal specialists in managing culture within post-M&A integration, this paper encourages executives engaged in planning any kind of strategic alliances to take seriously the need for cultural assessment alongside more commonplace pre-deal processes, and certainly as part of post-M&A programme planning. The paper links definitions of organisational and national culture to planning, and provides practical ways forward for cultural alignment post-deal. (Author: Ruth Murray-Webster)"
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 Cultural Diversity - Can it be Managed?
Beyond the Deal (2003)
"Deals often fail to meet their objectives as a result of poor intercultural synergy. Cultural diversity can be proactively managed, but a shift in mindset for many executives is required to treat this aspect of any alliance as seriously as the strategic, financial and legal issues.
Authored by one of our specialists in managing culture within post-M&A integration, this paper encourages executives engaged in planning any kind of strategic alliances to take seriously the need for cultural assessment alongside more commonplace pre-deal processes, and certainly as part of post-M&A programme planning. The paper links definitions of organisational and national culture to planning, and provides practical ways forward for cultural alignment post-deal."
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