The M&A Formula

4Take Ownership (Step 3)

Once you have identified and pursued your business model drivers, communicated your M&A vision to the entire organization, and ranked each project in the Goldman Gates, it is time to get to work. And you have to act quickly, before the opportunity to gain has been lost.

The M&A Launchpad is there to help you either reject or complete your next deal as quickly as possible.

Remember—be brutal. You are always looking for a reason to eject each candidate at any given stage, so that you can catch any potential pitfalls before they cause you serious harm. Don't allow emotional reasons to cloud your decision. M&A is not an emotional task, it is purely business model-driven. Either a deal works, or it doesn't.

Next to ‘Really Bad’ deals (done deals that failed miserably), there is nothing worse for shareholders than ‘Bad’ failures, which we define as deals which had the right business model fit in Goldman Gates Scoring, but were lost due to poor M&A practice in the company.

If you are a member of the Global M&A Elite or one of the high performers among SMEs, losing a deal due to poor M&A practice is a very painful process. To take the example of my favorite tennis player again, it would be like Serena Williams arriving on court without knowing whether she is playing a singles or a doubles game.

In the Introduction, we compared the world's top fund managers (indirect investments) with corporate M&A (direct investments). There are many similarities between these ...