Tag: Strategic Acquirer

Are You Ready to Beat the Odds? 10 Questions You Should Ask Before Buying a Company

About 70% of acquisitions fail. Either the deals don’t result in the expected synergies or worse – they detract from a company’s existing value. The good news is that you can beat these terrible odds by preparing before you begin pursuing deals. In our experience, here are ten questions we ask our clients before embarking …

Continue reading

Does the Highest Bidder Always Win the Deal?

The short answer to this question is no. Some owners may sell to the highest bidder, but this is not always the case. Differentiating by price alone is problematic for a number of reasons, the most obvious being that someone can always outbid you. In addition, when it comes to privately-held transactions, especially, we find …

Continue reading

5 Ways to Rethink Strategic Growth – #2 Be Proactive

How many of you have ever purchased a home? Thinking back on your experience, did you sit around waiting for a seller to come to you or did you spend time looking for just the right house? My guess is that most of our experiences fall into the second scenario. In fact, if I waited …

Continue reading

What Every Manager Needs to Know About M&A – AMA Edgewise Podcast

Hollywood would have us believe that the bulk of M&A transactions are a ruse to split of up newly acquired firms, but the reality is most deals average $100 million in size and are not nearly as dramatic as the movies. In today’s environment, where the world is changing quickly, and customers are seeking additional …

Continue reading

Two Key Points for Strategic Buyers from 3M’s Latest Acquisition

3M, the maker of Post-it, will acquire Scott Safety from Johnson Controls for $2 billion to build up its safety division. This is the second largest acquisition for 3M after its purchase of Capital Safety, a maker of fall protection equipment such as harnesses, lanyards, and self-retracting lifelines, from KKR & Co. for $2.5 billion …

Continue reading

Acheiving Your Goal with Multiple Acquisitions

One of the most effective ways for strategic buyers to grow through acquisitions is to “take frequent small bites of the apple,” or to conduct a series of smaller, strategic acquisitions in order to achieve a growth goal. Even those these deals might not be as “exciting” as mergers between two huge competitors, they can …

Continue reading

5 Ways Minority Interest Helps You Grow

Private equity firms are increasingly acquiring minority interests in public companies in order to grow, according to the Wall Street Journal. The landscape for PE is changing. Firms are facing tough competition from strategic acquirers who have cash on their balance sheets and are typically willing to spend more on an acquisition. At the same …

Continue reading

Successful Acquisitions Begin with Trust

Trust is everything. As leaders, we can forget this during the excitement of a deal. We can get caught up in reviewing financials, bogged down in the details of due diligence, or absorbed in mountains of research and completely forget about the humans involved in the transaction. When you take a moment to think, it’s …

Continue reading

Strategic Buyers Hungry for Acquisitions

Recent analysis shows that deal activity reached $435 billion in the first quarter of 2016 in North America and Europe. This is the second highest total on record and 84% of the deals were executed by strategic buyers. Companies with lots of cash on their balance sheets and are now willing to deploy some of it …

Continue reading

The Most Important Thing about M&A According to Warren Buffett

Last week, thousands of investors gathered at Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting in Omaha. Warren Buffett, perhaps one of the greatest strategic acquirers, shared his insights for successful acquisitions. There are two pearls of Buffett wisdom, reported direct from the meeting by Dealbook that I’d like to highlight in this post. Looking at the Big …

Continue reading

Load more