Mergers & Acquisitions

Midagon has experience and a proven methodology to manage the M&A PMO over the whole project lifecycle, from planning and implementation to cutover war rooms and hypercare. Our skilled consultants can prevent and prepare for many of the typical problems of M&A projects, which speeds up the implementation and reduces the risk of failure. Our templates and checklist rapidly create a structure for the project and reduce the risk of missing some crucial aspects. 

A typical M&A project has following tracks, which need to be synchronized in the M&A PMO: 

• Finance 

• HR 

• Sales and supply chain (incl. Products and Services, Pricing, Account Management, Stocks and Inventories, Sourcing) 

• ICT 

• Legal 

• Marketing and communications 

• Facilities 

The tracks have complex and deep dependencies, which means that they cannot make siloed decisions.  

60-80% of the M&A implementation costs come from ICT, while more than half of the synergies available in a merger are strongly related to ICT. Therefore, the success of any merger, acquisition or divestment depends almost entirely on a practical and well-planned implementation. 

One of the biggest challenges during ICT integration is to reach strategic business objectives quickly while making sure that day-to-day operations continue uninterrupted. 

Because ICT is business-critical and the most time- and effort-consuming part in M&A implementation, we often manage the ICT stream in these programs. The primary aim typically is to create an ICT architecture that ensures business continuity. Another aim is to identify opportunities to standardize, consolidate, optimize applications and infrastructure, and to evaluate and streamline partner and vendor ecosystem. 

Many of Midagon’s M&A consultants have a history of holding a position either as a CIO or ICT PMO leads, which means that we understand the full stack of ICT services and solutions, the dependencies between business and ICT and the new possibilities to tackle the problem areas.  

Finance is a key track in M&A projects. It is crucial for business continuity and management. There are also many regulatory requirements, which need to be continuously complied with. For example, any changes in finance have potential tax implications and in publicly listed companies can easily affect the stock price. 

Many of us have worked as CFOs or in other key roles in finance and have experience in divestments and mergers. We know how to reorganize and manage finance structures in M&A projects. Good examples are complex country legal mergers, which require a good understanding of multiple local accounting and tax practices. 

Some of our clients divest and/or acquire businesses on a regular basis. In that case, it makes sense to “industrialize” the M&A process and set a template for future M&A projects. This is often called an M&A Playbook. 

We have helped our customers in M&A Playbook formulation. In these projects, we typically merge existing customer M&A know-how and the Midagon methodology. The M&A Playbook is then jointly tested and piloted in the following M&A project and adjusted, as needed.