David Braun
Author's posts
The LOI Audience: More than Just the Owner
Do you know who will read your letter of intent? Many assume that only the owner of the company you wish to purchase will read the LOI, but often there’s a wider audience. While the owner is your top priority, there are other likely readers of the LOI you need to consider: the board of …
What Is Synergy?
When speaking about mergers and acquisitions you often hear the word “synergy” used to explain the rationale of a deal. Here are just a few examples from recent headlines: “The Renault-Nissan carmaking alliance expects to generate 5.5 billion euros ($6 billion) of synergies in 2018.” “[Sysco] said it believed it could achieve $600 million in …
Is a Company Good or Bad? Evaluating Your Acquisition Prospects
How can you tell a good company from a bad company? A lot of CEOs say that they trust their gut when it comes to acquisition targets, but unfortunately instincts and opinions aren’t enough. We need facts and metrics. We need real tools to generate quantifiable data about the companies we’re considering. M&A is a massive …
M&A Integration: The 100-Day Plan
Whenever I am consulting on an integration program, I introduce a critical component I call the 100-Day Plan. I’ve found that when companies get the 100-Day Plan right, the likelihood for a successful integration is extremely high. But if you don’t implement the 100-Day Plan at the beginning, integration generally doesn’t go well. Why is …
10 Signs You Should Walk Away from a Deal
Do you know when to walk away from a transaction? After all that hard work putting together an acquisition —not to mention the costs in both time and money—it might seem unthinkable to give up on a deal. But you should be on the lookout for these 10 warning signs during the transaction process. They may …
DSW Uses Targeted Acquisition to Expand Online and Abroad
Reflecting the growth of ecommerce, shoe retailer DSW will acquire Ebuys, Inc., the company announced on February 17. At $62 million, the acquisition may seem tiny compared to such newsmakers as Sysco’s $3.1 billion deal to acquire Brakes Group or IBM’s $2.6 billion deal to acquire Truven Health Analytics. But there are opportunities to learn …
Why You Shouldn’t Rely on Just the Internet for Information
In today’s internet age it seems like information is widely and almost instantaneously available. Just open up a web browser and type your search into Google and thousands of hits show up in less than a second. But how much of that information is accurate? Precise data is critical to every business decision, especially when …
Why Use a Nonbinding Letter of Intent?
There are many tools available to help move a transaction forward, ranging from a simple handshake agreement to a formal purchase agreement with contingencies. We have found one of the most useful tools for moving the M&A process along is the nonbinding letter of intent. To further understand the advantages of the nonbinding LOI, we’ve outlined …
Mergers and Acquisitions: 2015 A Record Breaking Year
Despite record levels of activity, the current M&A market is still quite a bumpy ride for many. In 2015, deal value reached $2.3 trillion and 9,962 deals were announced in the U.S. Compared to 2014 numbers, we saw a very significant increase in deal value, while the number of deals was relatively flat (-1.6 percent). This …
What Are the Pros and Cons of M&A?
At Capstone, we are big proponents of using external growth and M&A to grow strategically, but it would be wrong to say that external growth is always the best way to grow. Every company’s situation is unique – there’s no “one size fits all” approach to strategic growth. For some companies, organic growth may be the …
