One of the fastest ways to grow your business is by purchasing another company. Growth through acquisition can transform your business, and assist you in achieving goals such as expanding geographically, diversifying your customer base, and adding depth to your management team.
While there can be big rewards in buying a business, there also are significant risks. Acquiring a private held business can be complicated and time consuming. There also is the uncertainty that the deal will not close for a variety of reasons that are outside of your control.
Considering these factors, as an advisory firm we almost universally advise our clients to use a structured process. This article provides a brief overview of the process improvements many of our clients have used to grow their companies using mergers and acquisitions (“M&A”). In subsequent articles we will address specific issues that we have encountered in each step of the process.