Your M&A memory shouldn’t live in three people’s heads
Teasers buried in inboxes, personal address books, go/no-go decisions with no written record: for many acquirers, M&A memory rests on a handful of individuals. It can become a company asset instead, shared, documented and up to date, from the first teaser received through to closing.
The personal address book, blind spot of M&A strategy
Without shared memory, every deal starts from scratch and the network lives in the heads of two or three people. When one of them changes role, part of the company’s market knowledge leaves with them.
Dealmaker lists, by contrast, are built by country, sector and profession: the funds active in your segment in Italy, the lawyers behind the latest sales in your industry in France, the banks financing your competitors. They are shared with colleagues in two clicks via a web link, and exported to PDF for a committee or a trip. Shared, documented and up to date, the network survives internal moves and grows with everyone’s activity.
A single address to receive every opportunity
Opportunities arrive through many channels: colleagues in the field, advisors, dealmakers in your network. Scattered across inboxes, they get lost or are each assessed against different criteria.
A dedicated URL for receiving teasers changes that. Your colleagues and the professionals in your network submit opportunities there, and each one is routed to the right people. The pipeline becomes exhaustive, comparable and remembered: every teaser received stays accessible, with the assessments and decisions that went with it.
A shared scoring grid, a score open to debate
Each opportunity is assessed against a consistent grid: strategic fit, size, geography, value creation, risks. The number and names of the criteria are tailored to each company, so the grid reflects your acquisition strategy.
The assessment is collaborative: every colleague invited to the project gives their view on the chosen criteria. The result is not an opaque score but a rating open to debate, with the history of the arguments.
The status of each target is kept up to date. A target marked “interested” is not marked so on a simple claim: the status comes from a qualified, dated exchange with the owner, with the position recorded (acquisition, sale or neutral) and the sourcing origin.
A go/no-go you can defend before the executive committee
Collaborative assessment structures the go/no-go decision, keeps the history of each file and documents the rationale behind every decision. It is governance you can defend before your executive committee, because every trade-off is on record.
The grid is also useful after the decision. It shows where to focus due diligence, which clauses to put in the letter of intent, and where not to intervene during integration.
The memory of the relationship, through to closing
Every exchange is logged: dated notes, assigned tasks, documents exchanged, contacts identified. A subsidiary head, a head of corporate development or a CFO see the same accounts and the same next steps.
A platform organises information; a professional turns it into decisions. A dedicated project lead takes up your acquisition thesis, prioritises leads and runs decision-oriented steering meetings: targets to dig into, approach feedback, introductions, trade-offs and timetable. They review the return on investment every quarter and help set up tailored indicators, from the first target through to closing.
The network becomes a company asset, not one person’s address book.