We work closely with clients to create a clear M&A blueprint that accelerates their progress toward strategic goals.

• • Broad perspective on M&A. We help clients determine which sectors and functions offer the most potential, based on deep understanding of industry value chains and the underlying economics. We also help assess capabilities to execute a given transaction, determine what investors are willing to support, and identify sources of advantage relative to competitive offerings.
  • Long-term, objective view.Our insights and fact-based view help clients determine how well M&A programs enable strategies, support growth, and provide value to shareholders.
  • Unrivalled specificity. Successful M&A programs require precision to find the best targets at the best valuation. Our M&A blueprints reflect clients’ unique competitive advantages and take market and regulatory trends into account.
  • Deep understanding of the value at stake.We help our clients apply the technical principles of valuation to their strategic decision making, M&A approaches, and managerial practices

• When regulatory remedies, or strategy, require divestures, we help clients accelerate and manage these separations smoothly. We assist in assessing portfolios, requirements, and market timing to ensure that all separations—including the sale of carved-out businesses to corporate or financial buyers, a spin-off to current investors, or a sale in public markets to new investors—reflect an end-to-end plan that advances long-term strategy.
  • Divestiture strategy.We help clients prepare for divestitures by reviewing their portfolio and asset boundaries and by developing an equity-value story for the transaction. We also help clients shape the governance and organization of the new enterprise.
  • Divestiture management.We help set up the SteerCo, create a Divestiture Management Office and communications and change-management plans—working with advisers, as needed.
  • Separation execution.We help drive the disentanglement plan, create transition-services agreements, and prepare the organizations and leadership teams for the separation.
  • NewCo design.For spin-offs and IPOs, we help create a NewCo operating model and organizational design, work on talent retention and selection, and create a plan to shape internal communications and the culture of the new enterprise during and after the separation.
  • Transaction enablement.We support overall planning and execution processes, while meeting any necessary technical requirements.
  • Public offerings. From start-ups to privatizations and carve-outs, we help clients in several ways:
    • formulate and communicate a compelling strategy to maximize value
    • develop capital-market strategies and determine the best IPO timing and structure
    • prepare for financial markets, including IPO project management, business plans, valuations, financing strategies, listing documents, and analyst and road-show presentations
    • build capabilities needed for long-term success in capital markets

• Successful programmatic acquirers have distinctive capabilities across all the stages of M&A. This includes strategy and sourcing, due diligence and deal execution, integration planning and execution, and creating an M&A operating model. We help clients by doing the following:
  • Bringing the right tools, skills, and capabilities to accelerate deal making.Our battle-tested tools and hundreds of M&A global experts assure speed and effective execution. Our experts include deeply skilled transactions practitioners and capability-building coaches who are experienced in helping clients overcome roadblocks in diverse M&A environments.
  • Bridging corporate-deal and sector (business unit) expertise more effectively.We help clients design organizations and clarify responsibilities to enable corporate and business-unit teams to increase the pace and quality of M&A activity.
  • Codifying institutional insights.After transactions, we run postmortems, capture learning, and build and refresh playbooks across all the stages of M&A to ensure that all client M&A activity reflects best practices.
  • Strengthening client capabilities needed to build NewCo.We align top teams on the NewCo leadership approach and tailor capability-building programs to achieve culture and synergy targets as well as broader integration objectives.

Many things can compromise a deal that looks great on paper—a misaligned management team, cultural conflicts, a slow integration process, disruptions that reach customers or businesses, a lack of value-creation rigor, or aspirations that fail to capitalize on transformational opportunities. We help clients address the most critical success factors from start to finish, and we mitigate risks inherent in every deal.

• • Integration across functions.Our expertise across all functional areas, including commercial (for example, sales, R&D, and product development), operations (such as manufacturing, supply chain, and procurement), and enabling functions (for instance, technology), helps clients achieve maximum value and a smooth path to integration.
  • Master planning.Our jointly led Integration Management Office creates a comprehensive plan to manage key risks and interdependencies, speed integration activities, and achieve the aspirations of the deal.
  • Value capture.We help clients build an “apples to apples” financial baseline, set synergy targets, and execute value-capture initiatives. We encourage clients to aim higher and typically identify cost and revenue synergy opportunities that exceed due-diligence estimates by 30 to 150 percent.
  • Organizational design and talent management.We help clients shape their organizational structure and operating model to support their strategies and retain key talent during integration and after close.
  • Culture and change management.Culture — “the way we do things around here” — can pose a significant obstacle to successful integration. We help clients measure and manage cultural compatibility, incorporating more than 100 actions to minimize the risk of a culture clash.
  • We draw on multiple disciplines, including change management and psychology, to help clients shape perceptions about the wisdom of their deals, reassure stakeholders, and build optimism about NewCo’s prospects.
  • We create a blueprint for the IT end state and build digital solutions and capabilities that turn technology into a true source of value.

We partner with clients to address the most critical success factors.

• • Long-term value creation.We help clients shape the strategic rationale for the partnership and find the right partners. We also help them determine the desired outcome, measure progress, and adjust course, as needed, to align strategy, value, and goals for all partners.
  • Structuring a partnership is as much about the legal document that will shape the long-term relationship as it is about mutual understanding of contributions, operating approach, boundaries, and key criteria for managing the relationship. We help clients establish governance models that guide ventures toward their desired outcomes.
  • Operating model.Making partnerships operational can be the most demanding stage of these transactions, requiring a single culture, joint road map, and shared management of talent, assets, and processes. We help clients create cohesive operating models for their ventures, often supplemented by transition-services agreements.
  • Long-term monitoring.Fewer than 25 percent of JVs achieve all of their initial objectives, and almost 70 percent encounter challenges in the first three years. Understanding the need to intervene or restructure strategy, governance, or financial arrangements—and being willing to do so—can make or break a JV over the long term. We help clients conduct regular tracking and “health checks”—so that they can adjust operating models and objectives to meet the needs of all JV partners or structure an orderly exit if a venture loses its relevance.