Communication
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Effective Deal Sourcing Through Market Mapping
In order for M&A to be effective, you have to be proactive. It is a great tool and should be a part of your growth strategy. Sabeeh Khan, Director of Corporate Development at Infoblox, talks about effective deal sourcing through market mapping in this article.
The Basics of Sell-Side M&A
Selling your business is the most significant transaction of your life, and it is vital that you know what you're doing before you put your company up for sale. Proper preparation is key to selling a business. In this article, Adam Coffey, Founding Partner of CEO Advisory Guru LLC, discusses the basics of sell-side M&A.
How to Source Deals and Build Your Pipeline
M&A deals don’t just fall from the sky. Proactively sourcing deals is the best way to approach M&A, and in this article, Jeremy Segal, EVP, Corporate Development at Progress, teaches us how to source deals and build your pipeline.
How M&A Strategy Evolves in Education Technology
Online education is not new. But because of the pandemic, the entire educational sector was forced to shift in this direction, increasing competition. In this article, Tom Horton, SVP of Corporate Development at Kaplan, Inc., will talk about how M&A strategy evolves in education technology.
From Accounting to an M&A Career
M&A is a fascinating industry with no clear blueprint on how to get in. Kayla Davis, Vice President, Head of M&A at ABM Industries, came from accounting to an M&A Career, and in this article, she will share her journey and key lessons learned along the way.
Career Development in M&A
Traditionally, corporate development professionals come from banking roles. And while nothing is wrong with that, it is always fascinating to hear other ways that professionals start their careers in M&A. Sharing his career development in M&A is Caleb Shafer, Corporate Development Associate at RS Group plc.
Implementing an Actionable GTM Strategy
Implementing your GTM Strategy is one of the most crucial parts of integration. Learn all the challenges of implementation featuring Hannah Leung, Senior Manager, M&A at Salesforce.
How to Run an Integration Led Confirmatory Diligence Process
While some companies bring the integration team in the diligence process, some take it even further. In this article, Jim Buckley, Vice President, Mergers and Acquisitions Integration at VMware, talks about how to run an integration-led confirmatory diligence process.
How to Formulate Your M&A Strategy
Too many times, we've seen M&A used as a strategy to grow businesses. But in fact, M&A is not a strategy, it's a tool that organizations should use to achieve their corporate strategy. And once you understand your true north, having an M&A strategy is just as important. In this article, we will learn how to formulate an M&A strategy with Matt Arsenault, VP of Corporate Development at Jamf.
How to Stand Up an IMO
The importance of integration has never been more prevalent. And standing up a dedicated function to oversee integration is becoming more of a necessity as a company grows more prominent. Having an integration management office (IMO) might be a good idea for your company. But how do you stand up to such a function? Shedding light on this matter is Ian Burk, EVP of integration at Upland Software, as he talks about how to stand up an IMO.
How to Grow Purely on Acquisitions
From zero revenue to a billion-dollar market capitalization, Upland Software has been able to grow its business through M&A acquisitions exponentially. Learn from Austin Woody, Senior Vice President of M&A and Corporate Development at Upland Software.
How to Tie Deal Origination to Strategy Development
With so many companies out there, how do you know who to approach as your M&A targets? Helping us how to tie deal origination to strategy development is Scott Hile, Senior Director, Corporate Strategy & Development at Enviva.
How to Build a Great M&A Strategy
An M&A transaction can be an expensive mistake, but a solid strategy allows you to pick the right targets and pursue them proactively. Learn from Sreepathy Viswanathan, Chief Corporate Development Officer, HGS Healthcare, on how to build a great M&A strategy.
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Automation Roll-ups & Growing Technical Leadership Talent
In a highly fragmented industry, roll-ups are one of the most effective ways to grow a business. Daniel Burseth, Vice President at Eckhart, Inc., has bought and integrated six companies in the last few years. In this article, he will be sharing how they roll-up small manufacturing companies.
Importance of An Earnout
During any M&A transaction, disagreements between the buyer and the seller are quite common, especially regarding the purchase price. The seller usually expects a higher price with their best interest in mind, and the buyer normally wants to pay a lower price.
Agile Integration Planning
Integration is arguably the most important part of any acquisition. The ROI of your deal is purely based on how well you integrate the acquired company into your organization. And while that is true, integration is also the most challenging part. You need to combine two different companies and make it into one big company.
How to Pivot to an M&A Integration Career
Are you looking to pivot into an M&A integration career? Over the past decade, the importance of integration has become more prevalent. Practitioners have realized a well-planned integration is how value is achieved. However, the role and the skills needed for integration leaders remain the same. In this article, John Morada, COO at M&A Science, will be sharing how to begin an M&A integration career, and the essential skills needed for the role.
Negotiation Fundamentals
How you approach negotiations can determine the success of the overall transaction and your future relationship with the other party. In this article, Larry Forman, Senior Manager at Deloitte, helps us understand how to approach M&A negotiations to increase deal success.
Modernizing a Process-Based Company
Is your company’s M&A process out of date? Learn from Naomi O’Brien, Head of M&A Integration at Honeywell, as she talks about modernizing a process-based company.
Standing up a Diligence and Integration Management Office
The majority of Corporate Development involves their integration team a couple of weeks before closing the deal. And while this is good practice, it’s not the best. According to Kerry Perez, Head of M&A at AMN Healthcare, there is a real benefit in involving your integration team earlier than that.
How to Acquire for Capabilities
Acquiring additional capabilities is one of the best ways to do M&A. You can improve your existing offers to your customers and gain access to new markets and demographics. Zoominfo is the go-to-market intelligence platform that helps organizations identify and connect with consumers. In this article, Zoominfo’s founder and CEO Henry Schuck, will help us learn how to acquire additional capabilities.
Creating the Right Governance Structure in an M&A Deal
In a typical M&A transaction, two different people are leading the deal team and the integration efforts. But what happens when one person is tasked to do end-to-end M&A? Tomer Stavitsky, Corporate Development, M&A Lead at Intuitive Surgical, leads diligence and integration in his organization. In this article, he discusses how he ensures his acquisitions are successful from start to finish with the right governance structure.
Successful Acquisitions Through Leadership and Culture
In December 2018, Cigna bought Express Script for $67 Billion, ranked as the 35th largest M&A deal of all time. So what made the deal so successful? Let's find out in this interview.
The Complexities of Sell-Side M&A
Selling your business is not always easy. The longer it has been a part of your life, the more attachment you have with it and the people. The decision to pull the trigger comes with a lot of complexities, especially for most entrepreneurs, as it could be the biggest transaction of their lives. Sharing his experience and the intricacies of sell-side M&A is Noah Waisberg, Co-Founder & CEO of Zuva, as Litera just acquired his company Kira Systems.
Hiring Your Head of Corporate Development
More and more companies are starting to look at inorganic growth to ramp up their companies immediately. M&A is a tool to achieve your strategy and it starts with hiring your head of corporate development. With the help of Charles Breed, VP of Corporate Development at Corel Corporation, let's all learn how to hire your corporate development that fits into your M&A strategy.
How to Create Better People Experience in M&A
After over 100 podcast interviews, we have collected over 40 lessons learned from top practitioners worldwide. And in those lessons, we saw a recurring theme , creating a better people experience in M&A is key to a successful transaction. So how do we do it? Let’s all learn from the HR expert, Klint Kendrick, Chair of the HR M&A Round Table.
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Making M&A GTM Successful
Creating a go-to-market plan is one of the first things to do during an acquisition. When you don't have a clear GTM strategy before the deal is closed, you won't know what systems you need in place, and what people skills are required to make your combined product work. In this interview, Gwen Pope, Head of Global Product M&A at eBay, will help us understand how to make an M&A GTM successful.
M&A Market Trends from a Banker’s Perspective
The markets change all the time, and the M&A industry is no exception. Especially with COVID-19, changes in the market have been crazy these past years. Helping us understand the M&A market trends from a banker's perspective is Kunal Jain, Director, at William Blair Health Care Investment Banking.
Overcoming Change Management With Great Leadership
With all the fear and uncertainties in an M&A deal, employees need a strong leader. Harry Kraemer, Jr, Professor of Management and Strategy at Kellogg school of management, believes that effective leadership can overcome change management challenges.
Keeping Integration Simple
M&A practitioners love to go into details. And while that could be beneficial, it doesn’t often help with team alignment. According to Jim Buckley, Vice President, Mergers and Acquisitions Integration at VMware, keeping integration simple is the real key to success.
How To Create A Successful Integration Plan
Integration is all about capturing value. In this episode, Jim Buckley, Vice President, Mergers and Acquisitions Integration at VMware, talks about creating a successful integration plan and measuring success post-close.
How to Structure Teams Approaching M&A Diligence
Every company that does M&A has varying team sizes and many attributing factors as to how their deal team is currently constructed.
How to Negotiate and Structure NDAs
An NDA is not a routine document in an M&A deal. It is vital in setting up the relationship of both parties as they move forward. Discussing in-depth how to negotiate and structure NDAs in an M&A deal is Mark Khavkin, CFO at Pantheon Platform.
Buy or Build Considerations in M&A
Before you start making any acquisition, buy or build considerations should always be a part of your decision. In this interview, Cameron Weiner, VP of Strategic Development, Head of M&A at Shopko Optical, shares how he determines if you should buy or build.
Engineering Deals for Success
M&A deals are never easy and require rigorous planning. But despite its complexities. There is a way to increase your chances of success. According to Punit Micocha, EVP, Corporate Development at Zscaler, it's all about planning what the end state would look like right from the start.
How to Create a Successful GTM Strategy
A GTM strategy is one of the most critical parts of an integration plan. In this episode, Pragnya Kashinath, Director of M&A at Cognizant, talks about how to create a successful GTM strategy from the very beginning of the transaction and the challenges that go with it.
How to Manage Sourcing Diligence and Integration
Managing an entire acquisition is pretty daunting, especially if you are new to the process. This is probably why two people are leading the charge in any M&A deal; a deal lead and an integration lead. Each has its own roles and responsibilities but are equally important. Let's all learn how to manage sourcing, diligence, and integration from two of the industry's top minds: Sabeeh Khan, Director, Corporate Strategy & Development at Syniti, and Aaron Whiting, M&A Integration and Strategic Programs at ContinuumCloud.
Staying True To Your Culture in M&A
Culture can kill a deal, and Trish Mosconi, Executive Vice President, Chief Strategy Officer & Corporate Development at Synchrony, proves it. They walked away from a deal due to massive cultural differences and could not see a way to integrate the business in their organization.
How to Commit to Integration from Start to Finish
Fully committing to integration starts with a deep partnership between corp dev and integration. Learn all about it, featuring Karen Ashley, Vice President of Corporate Development Integration at Cisco.
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Transformative M&A
We all know that M&A can transform a business overnight if the deal is done correctly. However, not everyone knows how to make transformative M&A successful. In this article, Duncan Painter, CEO at Ascential Plc, talks about transformational deals for their company and how they make it successful.
Managing Infrequent Acquisitions
Peter Linas, CPO & EVP Corporate Development at Bullhorn, talks about how his corporate development team looks like in an infrequent acquisition environment and how they hire external consultants to make their deals successful.
Executing a Divestiture without a Bank
Regardless of popular belief, a company can execute divestitures without a bank with the right amount of dedication and resources. Having done it multiple times, Russ Hartz, VP Corp Dev at Ansys, will be helping us understand the process and some of the best practices during this transaction.
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Hunting Deals in M&A
Finding the right deals is hard, especially if you're looking for companies that don't want to be found. In this episode, Dustin Intihar, Director, M&A, and Strategic Alliances at Lubrizol, talks about how to hunt deals in M&A the right way.
How to Preserve Value in M&A Post-Acquisition
Value often gets destroyed in M&A. Jay Dettling, CEO of Ansira, has been on both sides of the deal. In this episode, we're talking about preserving value post-acquisition, and his advice to CEOs getting acquired for the first time.
Buy and Build Strategy
PE firms have a very short term holding period and need to grow businesses fast. Adam Coffey, CEO at CoolSys, Refrigeration and HVAC Systems, is an expert on growing these companies using the buy and build strategy. In this article, he will share what it is and how to create sustainable success.
Evolving Your M&A Integration Function
Transitioning to fully remote M&A transactions is not easy but very doable. With the proper tools and proper techniques to manage your people across these technologies, your M&A process can run smoothly.
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How to Realize Deal Value
Integration is where you realize deal value and you need to focus on it from the very start. In this episode, Michael Devita, Success Strategy Lead at Salesforce, is going to talk about lessons that he learned from executing successful integration and how to successfully realize deal value in M&A.
How to use Multiple Deal Structures to Make Partnerships Successful in India
Reliance Retail is one of the fastest-growing retailers in the world. Learn how they manage multiple deal structures to make their partnerships successful directly from their President and CEO, Darshan Mehta.
Executing Divestitures
Divestiture is not the reverse of an acquisition, and it takes more work and preparation. In this episode, Rhonda Rein, Director, Corporate Development at Thomson Reuters, helps us understand where divestiture starts, how TSA work and what happens after close.
The Truth About Change Management
Preserving the value of the acquired company should be the number one priority in any deal. Of course, any buyer would want to get what they paid for in the first place. But more often than not, value leaks post-close. Even though there are many reasons why this is happening, one could argue that it is mostly about people.
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How to Manage Multi-Vertical Strategies
Managing a multi-vertical M&A strategy requires a high performing team, full of perpetual learners and with a strong appetite for risk taking. In this episode, Ailene Holderness, Head of M&A at IAC, talks about how they manage their multi-vertical strategy and how to build a high performing M&A team.
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Managing M&A on a High Scale
Managing M&A on a high scale takes good governance and clear strategy. In this episode, Jeff Bender, CEO at Harris, explains their entire M&A process on how they are able to do massive volumes of deals every year.
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How To Successfully Execute Deals With a Small Team
You don't need a huge M&A team to do deals successfully. With the right strategy in a specialized industry, you can make your process more efficient. In this episode, Jason Lippert, CEO of LCI Industries, shares how they successfully execute deals with a small team.
Managing Internal Dynamics
One of the most critical roles as head of corporate development is managing your internal team and dynamics. In this episode, Randy Tinsley, Vice President of Strategy & Corporate Development at Synopsys, breaks down how to get internal alignment, build your team, and set them up for success.
Why You Need To Ask Less During Diligence
When conducting due diligence, you want to be as thorough as possible. But it can also take a lot of time, money and resources to complete. James Harris, Principal of Corporate Development Integration at Google shares why we need to take a different approach to due diligence and how it can help your company in the long run.
Why You Should Execute A Divestiture Without A Bank?
Most companies hire banks to help them prepare for the sale, but it's not a requirement. Russ Hartz, VP of Corporate Development at Ansys talks about the pros and cons here.
Deal Origination From a PE investors Perspective
PE firms source deals differently from strategic buyers. Jay Jester, Partner at Plexus Capital, LLC, breaks it down into three categories; Brand Building Exercise, Customer Focus, and Setting up a System.
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How to Approach Diligence
Due Diligence is a crucial process that sets the tone for an acquisition. But how do you perform due diligence? Before we can understand how diligence gets done, we have to understand the goals associated with due diligence.
How To Negotiate Like a Pro
Negotiating is part of our daily lives. In this episode, we will be discussing how to effectively negotiate like a pro by determining how much leverage we have with the other party. Also, what skills are required for you to improve your negotiation skills.
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Conducting M&A without a Dedicated Team
Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need a dedicated M&A team to execute successful transactions. With proper team alignment and motivation, getting deals done is very much possible. In this episode, Alexi Venneri, founder and CEO of Digital Air Strike, shares her process as to why she thinks not having a dedicated team is actually better.
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How SS&C Conducts Acquisitions
Every acquirer has different strategies for their acquisitions. In this episode, we look at SS&C's system on how they look at deals, how they approach integration, and how they preserve the target company's value.
Behind the Scenes: Effective Deal Sourcing and Closing
Building out a brand new corporate development function can be challenging, especially if you don't know where to start.
How Empathy Makes Mergers and Acquisitions Successful
Why is it that some acquisitions are successful and some are not? Acquisitions can fail for reasons of strategy or execution. While no one can predict the future regarding market changes, an acquiring company can control how they execute on integrating the acquired company.
Conversations From the Frontlines
A strategic alliance can be a powerful tool that can help companies achieve specific goals. But what exactly is an alliance? And why do companies do it? To help us understand more about alliances, we've asked the expert Emma Barton, Director, Alliance and Integration Management at AstraZeneca, to help us in this discussion.
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Joint Ventures at Scale
Joint ventures are typically more complicated than traditional M&A because there are more parties involved, and everyone has to agree on many items. But with the right approach and model, a joint venture can run smoothly.
How to Prepare a Business for Private Equity Acquisition
Trade shows is an industry that is often underlooked. However, it is gaining more and more attention now from PE firms. Learn how to prepare your business for a private equity acquisition, featuring Philip Soar, Executive Chairman, and CEO of CloserStill Group PLC.
From Private to Public Company
Going from private company to public is a huge transition, especially from a CEO's perspective. It adds more responsibility and more reporting to more people. In this episode, Darren Lampert, CEO at GrowGeneration Corp, shares his good and bad experiences in this transition. He also talks about how this change affects their approach to M&A.
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How To Prevent International Deals From Failing
Have you ever wondered why international deals fail so often? Hear from AGCO Corporation's former CEO, Martin Richenhagen, about how leaders can prevent these types of deals from failing.
How to Build a Collaborative M&A Process Across the Deal Life Cycle
In this webinar, I discuss the common challenges that M&A practitioners face within their deals, and how project management software can solve these challenges and improve your overall process.
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Why Is M&A Integration So Hard?
If you ask any M&A practitioner, most will tell you the integration phase is the hardest. Learn why this is the case and how you can get through integration with ease.
Positive Employee Experience is Key to Successful M&A
When critical employees leave the company after the deal closes, the overall value of the deal can be destroyed. A positive employee experience will help a lot with employee retention and significantly increase the likelihood of achieving success for the deal.
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Effective M&A Deal Sourcing
An effective deal sourcing is all about relationships. This discussion talks about how to approach your target and get past gatekeepers.
Importance of Quality of Earnings
Quality of earnings is a crucial part of any company sale. It allows you to get a picture of the company's real value being sold and an overview of what it would look like on another ownership. Preparing a QofE analysis will help you negotiate better whether you are a buyer or a seller.
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How Diligence and Integration Planning Can Frame a Successful Valuation
Contrary to popular belief, Diligence and Integration actually frames the success of valuation. Valuation needs to be adjusted all the time as you discover more things in the process. The diligence and integration planning are the inputs and the valuation is the output.
What Successful Integration Looks Like
Why is it that some acquisitions are successful and some are not? Acquisitions can fail for reasons of strategy or execution. While no one can predict the future regarding market changes, an acquiring company can control how they execute on integrating the acquired company.
How to Build an M&A Center of Excellence from Scratch
These are the steps into building an M&A center of excellence from scratch. It's not going to be easy, but it will be a great tool for your company.
Aligning People For a Better Integration
The deal sponsor and the entrepreneur need to have a good relationship and alignment of the entire deal to succeed. Both parties need to understand and agree as to what will happen to the company post-close.
Conversations From the Frontlines
A strategic alliance can be a powerful tool that can help companies achieve specific goals. But what exactly is an alliance? And why do companies do it?
Career Paths in M&A
What role you come from is not as important as the skills and expertise that you offer. Different companies have different views of why M&A is valuable to them. In this discussion, Matt shares how you can navigate the different career paths in M&A.
Executing M&A from a Legal Perspective
Deals have become more complicated in the last 18 months from a legal perspective. But pandemic or not, you need to be aware of certain risks that can stop the entire deal altogether. Knowing how to mitigate them will help you close the deal faster and more efficiently.
Managing Communication Workstream
There are a lot of things that you should consider when building a communication strategy. Knowing how to manage your communication workstream is crucial in keeping the value of the business.
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M&A From Founder to A Board Member’s Perspective
M&A is very different through the lens of a CEO and a board member. While a CEO is in charge of the company's day-to-day operational tasks, a board member must ensure profitability.
Developing Leadership in M&A
A successful deal is largely attributed to leadership, much as it is when the deal fails. In this discussion, Scott shares share how to develop leadership in M&A, the different types of important leadership skills, and how you can develop them.
Human Capital Management in M&A
AI and data has come a long way and is now an effective way to gauge people's competency and behavior.
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Navigating International Deals
Navigating International deals is hard, but with the right mindset, and a good knowledge of what to look for, you can make the deal as smooth as possible.
How to Cultivate Relationships with Deal Targets
Relationships with deal targets are extremely important as they can help shape the entire deal process. Learn how you can form those relationships and avoid common pitfalls along the way to increase your chances of getting the deal done.
The Legal Team’s Role in M&A
The legal team has a crucial role in an M&A transaction. They need to understand the deal's overall strategy, and they need to be involved in the beginning. Some strategies have inherent legal risks, and it is the legal team's job to understand the regulatory, legal, and jurisdictional issues and obstacles that may be present in the transaction.
Planning a Divestiture from an HR's perspective
Human Resources plays a huge part in any M&A transaction, especially in a divestiture. Separating employees from the parent company certainly has many challenges and complexities that you need to prepare for. If this is your first time doing a divestiture, then you're in luck.
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Working with the Business Leader to Build an M&A Strategy
One of the biggest challenges in a corporate development role is setting expectations with business leaders to develop a strategy behind the deal. Most business leaders think they can do M&A but every acquisition must have a strategy behind it.
Managing Surprises in Diligence
While other people feel the need to eliminate surprises, Joseph Feldman thinks otherwise. He says we should be prepared for surprises, not eliminate them.
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Evolving to Agile M&A at Scale
Larger companies have started adopting Agile in their process. In this article, we will be talking about evolving to Agile M&A at scale with the help of Ashley Rice, Sr. Consultant HR M&A at Cisco, and Kimberly Baird, Corporate Development Integration Lead at Cisco.
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The One-Person Corporate Development Team
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How Microsoft Negotiate Deal Terms
Negotiating deal terms is a massive part of an M&A process. Every negotiator brings something different to the table, but one thing is for sure- both parties need to be happy, or else the deal won't get done.
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How to Maximize the Value of Your Business Prior to Sale
Everyone wants to sell their business at a high price. But in order to negotiate in your favor, you have to have leverage. Otherwise, you’re just hoping to get lucky that someone will be willing to pay for what you are asking for.
Joint Ventures Consolidation
Joint ventures are typically more complicated than traditional M&A because there are more parties involved, and everyone has to agree on many items. But with the right approach and model, a joint venture can run smoothly.
Best Ways to Approach Diligence
Approaching diligence efficiently sets the stage for better integration and the overall process. Learn buy-side diligence, red flags to look out for and integration planning with Judah Karkowsky, SVP Corporate & Business Development at Cengage.
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Implementing Agile into M&A
James Harris, Principal, Corporate Development Integration at Google shares how they implement the Agile methodology in their deals.
Complete Guide to Cultural Assessment
Dawn White describes how to best conduct and approach cultural assessments as well as common missteps she’s seen in the process and how to overcome them.
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Divestiture Planning to Execution
In this article, we will discuss how to plan a divestiture effectively to make it more valuable and successful with Larry Forman, Senior Manager at Deloitte, and Michael Frankel, SVP, Managing Director at Deliotte.
How Atlassian Negotiates a Term Sheet
With the help of Chris Hecht, Head of Corporate Development at Atlassian, we will discuss how Atlassian negotiates a term sheet and why did they open source their recent term sheet.
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