With market volatility seemingly an ever present force, having an agile integration team is as important as ever in hitting investment milestones and achieving success through deals.
While no two mergers are the same, the key integration objective can usually be placed into one of three buckets:
- Leveraging the scale of the Acquirer – applies when a larger business is absorbing a smaller target within their sector, where value can be created through expanding the reach of the target and bundling of products/offerings;
- Protecting the target business – applies where the target business brings new capability to the group or out-performs the acquirer in a certain field. The key challenges here being retention of key talent and providing the target with enough independence to grow while operating within the risk appetite of the wider group;
- Co-developing a combined business – this approach applies when two similarly sized businesses come together to become a combined force in the market. The most value tends to be achieved through embracing the opportunity to transform the combined business using best practises from both sides, employing the best systems and retaining the best talent.
While there is value in having a structured playbook to kick off an integration program, having the flexibility to develop bespoke integration plans, focused on a particular investment mandate, is crucial to realising the full benefit of the synergies available.
The OPS team at GreenMount are well placed to assist, regardless of your integration goals – not only with the integration itself, but with our Business Acceleration Partners, we can implement key digital transformation initiatives that capture the true value of any merger.