M&A Practitioners have a love/hate relationship with earnouts.  Everyone has a list of stories about how they go sideways, yet they continue to play a critical role in getting deals done. In this article, we examine a number of critical issues: To understand why earnouts still matter, the practical steps buyers and sellers can take to negotiate them effectively, and the most common mistakes that lead to disputes. Perhaps understanding these basics will make your next earnout

Avoid Pitfalls Not Mentioned in the Playbooks   Over our years of working on transactions, we’ve seen a lot--lots of good things and lots of bad things.  Last month we addressed the Three Handy "Do's" for M&A Success .  This month we’re looking at the Don’ts. Don’t Number 1: Don’t Treat M&A as a Strategy in Itself Companies that treat M&A as a strategy often build impressive deal engines. They get good—sometimes great—at due diligence, negotiation, and even integration. But i

Playbooks can be valuable tools that offer structure and minimize errors, but they alone can't ensure successful acquisitions or guard against hidden deal killers in M&A. To improve your chances of success, keep the playbook and add these three critical Do’s.

Despite their strategic promise, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) often fail to deliver expected financial returns for acquirers. While postmortems typically blame execution issues like flawed integration or employee turnover, the root cause may lie in the financial modeling process itself. Finance teams frequently build overly optimistic assumptions into deal models, creating unrealistic expectations for synergies, customer retention, and cross-selling potential.

Drawing on decades of experience guiding companies through successful sales, CorpDev Consulting recommends the four key strategies outlined in this article to elevate your company’s appeal and maximize value.

A PE exit can be a very stressful and time-consuming event for a portfolio company. The bulk of the work almost always falls on the...

Since the November election, deal fever has taken over. Nearly every market observer—and everyone in the M&A business—predicts a...

Engaging a Fractional Corp Dev Officer is an effective way to manage costs while aligning strategy and driving long-term value.

In the following article we discuss the importance of asking the question "what do you want?" during corporate development and M&A work.

What if the "almost-perfect" acquisition target is a cultural mismatch? What are your options?