Successful Acquisitions

EVALUATION: DATA VS. INTUITION

The formal assessment begins with evaluation, the process of assessing whether the target company can meet your strategic objectives. In reality, you have been conducting evaluations continually since putting together your initial list of companies, prioritizing and reprioritizing them based on your acquisition criteria. Now you are approaching a key choice point. Will you initiate active negotiations for a purchase? Will you start asking questions—including the financial ones—that up until now you have held back?

You want to make the decision to proceed as objective as possible, and that’s the purpose of your acquisition criteria. You may recall that I suggested developing your criteria along functional lines, ...