How M&A Turns a Chemical Company Into a Tech Business
Chandradev Mehta, SVP Strategy and Business Development at Hexion Inc.
In this episode, Chandradev breaks down Hexion’s acquisition of an AI and MarTech company, plus how to integrate a tech business into a chemical company without losing the expertise that makes it valuable.
What You'll Learn
- How to build a genuine build vs. buy vs. partner framework and when each is right
- Why buying a commercialized or near-commercialized business changes your risk profile in ways that building from scratch can’t (and never will)
- How Chandradev structures must-believes to maintain valuation discipline in competitive processes
- Why integration planning needs to start at IOI, not post-close
- What separates a banker worth your time from one running a numbers game
- Why small deals are frequently harder to execute than large ones (and how to protect against organizational deprioritization)
- How to negotiate JV governance before you need to unwind it
If you’re building an M&A capability from scratch or trying to get your team aligned on deal fundamentals, the M&A Fundamentals Track on DealPilot covers the full deal life cycle in roughly five hours, including vocabulary, process, and both sides of the table. Access it when you become an M&A Science member.
Hexion Inc. is a global chemical company specializing in thermoset resins used in building and construction, wood, and industrial markets. The company is expanding into technology-enabled services, including a recent acquisition in the AI and MarTech space, as part of a strategy to move from product-only sales toward a chemistry-as-a-service model
Chandradev Mehta
Chandradev Mehta is Senior Vice President of Strategy and Business Development at Hexion Inc., a global specialty chemicals company, where he leads the M&A function as a core driver of business model transformation. He spent years leading corporate development and strategy at Honeywell, one of the most active industrial acquirers in the world, before bringing that operating experience to Hexion's transformation agenda. What makes Chandradev's perspective distinct is that he's not just executing deals but he's using M&A to answer a harder question: how does a company built on chemistry become a company driven by technology? That question is sitting on the desk of every industrial CEO right now, and Chandradev has real experience navigating it.
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