How technology M&A and investment will transform the markets

Speaker Profile

From M&A strategy and planning through to integration, value creation and benefit realisation, I work with clients to maximise deal value. While the primary focus of my career has been health and life sciences, I support clients across a range of sectors.

From my 20 years of working on mergers, acquisitions and divestments, I believe the more you really know about the target business and the earlier you start analysing and planning the deal, the more value you can deliver. And with higher multiples having raised the bar for the value delivery needed to make the deal pay, this well informed and proactive approach has never been more important.

As a Deal Value Architect, I bring orchestration and accountability right through the deal lifecycle. My focus is very much on the nitty-gritty – the practical details that make the difference between deal value accretion and dilution.

A key part of my support for clients is identifying and developing upfront plans for the integration issues that will be critical in realising the full value of the deal – both hurdles to overcome and upsides to be maximised. Very often, these issues aren’t addressed until late in the day, by which time the hurdles are harder to overcome and a lot of the potential upside could be lost. As part of the planning and the execution, I work with my team to ensure objectives are anchored in hard numbers against which success can be measured. After the deal is complete, my teams and I continue to provide support for as long as is required to ensure successful integration. This could be overall integration management or specific support in key functional areas. Integral to all of this of course, is people.

Throughout the deal cycle, understanding and addressing the people and change elements is critical - these factors can easily be overlooked, but are essential to the success of any deal. This includes advising on leadership, operating model, culture, communications and the identification and retention of key personnel, both within the acquired and existing businesses. It also includes support planning to ensure that teams within the merged business can be working to their full potential from day one, focusing on business performance and not distracted by integration.