M&A Strategy and Value Creation Services

Our specialist team has industry and market expertise, and will respond to the specific needs of your transaction or investment situation.

We bring insights that inform your investment thesis, deal valuation and post-deal value creation plan by rapidly conducting primary research and combining it with secondary sources, covering the target company’s markets, customers, suppliers, and competitors. And we can do this virtually anywhere in the world.

Through strategic due diligence, we also assess potential upside opportunities that the business may not be taking advantage of, and possible downside risks that could disrupt the near-term or ongoing value of the deal.

Where relevant, we work closely with our financial, tax, IT and HR due diligence colleagues to ensure joined-up insights and a smooth process, reducing the burden on your deal team and the target company.

Growth Strategy

Growth Strategy

To give the M&A strategy clear guidance, we can help you refine your corporate strategy by identifying current and future growth opportunities, evaluating competitive market position, and seeking portfolio-improvement opportunities.

Due Diligence

Commercial Due Diligence
Acquisitive companies often have only a few weeks to decide whether to make an offer, and an important decision factor is whether they believe a target company’s claims about its position in the marketplace, financial stability, and hypotheses about future growth potential.

Operational Due Diligence
Our Operational Due Diligence (ODD) team comprises experienced line managers and operational due diligence specialists with operational restructuring and performance improvement expertise. This cumulative expertise enables us to deliver comprehensive insights into operational risk as well as potential opportunities in both pre-deal due diligence and post-deal value capture and enhancement.

Synergy Due Diligence
As corporations and private equity firms consider mergers and acquisitions that will combine operations, they generally rely on high-level, top-down assumptions to identify synergies that are built into valuations. These same organisations are often surprised when assumed post-deal operational improvements aren’t as significant as planned or take longer than expected to realise.

We help our clients with a bottom-up approach that puts management’s skin in the game early on to identify where specific top-line synergies shall be achieved and where cost reductions may be achieved. Such diligence can help justify valuations and drive early alignment around the new operating model for the combined business.

ESG Due Diligence
Supporting buy-side and sell-side clients with targeted ESG due diligence that prioritises material ESG considerations for each deal and links these risks and opportunities back to deal value.

Target identification and screening

Supporting clients in defining a set of screening criteria for potential acquisition targets, then identify and screen targets, and ultimately provide a shortlist of target candidates.

Performance improvement / Turnaround

Whatever the commercial context, it is rare to encounter an organisation that could not benefit from streamlined operations, reduced costs or increased sales. Our pragmatic, results-driven team applies a financial-investor lens to performance improvement. We have deep situational and sector experience, and take a hands-on and collaborative approach to achieving sustainable results.

• Diagnostics: comparator insight using proprietary benchmarking databases built from our own extensive experience
• EBITDA improvement: cost-reduction and revenue-growth strategies
• Operating Model optimisation: organisational review and redesign
• 100-day plans: design, validation, implementation: partnering businesses and investors to deliver value for all stakeholders
• Zero-based budgeting: performing the role of ’challenging friend’ throughout budget process, to ensure all costs are justified

Cash & Working Capital optimalization

Working Capital is often described as the ‘Lifeblood of a Business’ as it represents the operational liquidity of a company. The cells comprising this lifeblood is cash that flows in and out of the business as circulating short-term investments. Cash flows out to fund operational expenses that generate current assets and then cash flows back in as these current assets are converted back into cash. This cycle continues embodying the core operations of a business. Maintaining an optimal level of Working Capital can be a challenge for even the most profitable businesses. If Working Capital is not running efficiently, the flow of cash can significantly affect the liquidity of a business. Cash can be tied up in a multitude of ways including slow moving stock, early payments to suppliers, and slow collections from customers. This is akin to a blockage in the arteries of a business preventing cash from circulating through its cycle in a timely manner.

How we can help:

• Identify opportunities to improve cash flow through working capital levers
• Order to cash
• Procure to pay
• Forecast to fulfil
• Make working capital more efficient through sustainable process changes
• Operationally implement opportunities to improve cash and working capital
• Use data analytics to create working capital dashboards using transactional data