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 clearer, fairer,...

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 in our experience,...

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.