Umbrex is pleased to welcome Christopher Sargeant with CS Advisory Services. Chris spent 16 years at IBM in Corporate Strategy and General Management roles running various lines of business, prior to setting up his own consulting practice in 2018 to help clients with Digital Transformation, M&A and Global Expansion. Before IBM, he started his career in strategy consulting with Bain and Company in London, and later joined strategy boutique The Kalchas Group which was acquired by CSC Index. His industry…

Astrid Malval-Beharry shares a case study on competitive analysis that was used to support new product development and M&A decision-making. Situation Our client, a leading data and analytics vendor to healthcare organizations, sought to gain a detailed strategic and tactical understanding of eight competitors so that it could effectively develop a competitive positioning strategy. Our client wanted to understand which competitors (in the market now and potential new entrants) might most impact its strategy. They were concerned with how competitors…

Alex Miller talks smart money and mergers and acquisition in this article designed to help buyers take the plunge when opportunity knocks. Corporate buyers face unprecedented competition from private equity funds, as well as with traditional and non-traditional competition for the most attractive acquisitions.  Horizontal integration has largely played out in most traditional sectors, and the U.S. Department of Justice is carefully watching consolidation in many industries.  Corporations are also experiencing intensified threats from disruption and innovation, and competitive cycles…

David Gross shares an article designed to help improve the success of a merger and acquisition transaction. Trillions of dollars pour into mergers and acquisitions (M&A) annually as companies seek to increase market share, reduce costs, differentiate, diversify, refocus, and capture other sources of value. Unfortunately, M&A success is the exception, not the rule. A whopping 70 to 90 percent of transactions fail. This means, only 10 to 30 percent of transactions succeed. To put these terrible odds in perspective,…

Jeffery Perry shares his views on Elon Musk’s recent acquisition of Twitter to explore the pros and cons of making a company private. The holy grail in business is participating in a bell-ringing ceremony at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) or Nasdaq, illustrating the power and prestige of being a publicly-traded company. However, quarterly earnings reports, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations and required disclosures, and the abundance of private capital have many public companies considering going private. So…

Clemens Buss shares advice on mergers and acquisitions. For the past 25 years, I have provided investment banking type services to a large number of established corporations, startups, venture capital and private equity firms, and other entities. During the first 15 years of my career I worked for Tier 1 investment banks, for the last 10 years I have worked through my own firm, Chateau Partners. Most of the M&A transactions I work on now are in the $50m —…

Tight time constraints on commercial due diligence and changing market dynamics may slow the process of securing a deal. This company post, shared by David Burnie explains how to get a head start. Private equity funds are always on the lookout for their next deal. They scour the market, have countless conversations about potential targets, and deal with increasingly intense competition. Once an attractive target is finally identified and courted, funds must go through the commercial due diligence process. Tight…

Astrid Malval-Beharry shares a case study on establishing a robust M&A process to ensure acquisition success. Our client, a leading data & analytics vendor to the insurance industry, approached StratMaven to help them develop a rigorous M&A screening process that enabled fast, effective responses to sound M&A opportunities, and supported more effective research to find even better ones. Analysis StratMaven kicked off the project by conducting a comprehensive review of industry trends, looking not just at current influencing factors, but…

From David Burnie’s company blog, a handy post-merger integration checklist with lessons and examples from real integrations. While each post-merger integration (PMI) is different, many elements are consistent no matter the size or nature of the transaction. Checklists can guide your integration whether you are executing your first integration or face multiple integrations per year. In addition, they can help your organization to ensure everyone knows what to do for each workstream and stage of the integration to ensure you…

In this article, Jeffery Perry writes about frothy mergers and acquisitions, synergy expectations, and integrations. Despite the business challenges of the global pandemic, global mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity in 2021 has been at record levels across sectors. For corporations, private equity (PE) firms, and special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), when M&A deals happen, headlines rightfully focus on valuations and strategic rationale. For corporate combinations and PE rollups, synergy expectations and integration approaches garner a great deal of attention as…

Alessandro Santo shares a post based on an Interview with Fredrik Cassel on Creandum on the connection with Spotify. We first met Spotify in spring of 2007, and later Creandum Fund II led the firm’s first venture round of funding. Ten years later we’re hearing Creandum partner Fredrik Cassel brag too much about being user 700-something, so we we decided look at that moment where we first signed up. This interview can also be found on our website. Creandum: So…

Umbrex is pleased to welcome Neeraj Monga with ANTYA Investments. Neeraj is a top-ranked investment professional with extensive experience in forensic accounting, corporate governance, fundamental equity analysis and thematic research. Over a successful career spanning twenty years in global investing and advice, Neeraj has assisted clients in avoiding torpedo stocks that decimate portfolio performance. Neeraj focuses only on actionable and strategic investment advice and avoids the EPS-based rat-race that provides little value-added information to institutional investors. In his consulting practice,…

Umbrex is pleased to welcome Richard L. Koppel with MilestoneCVC. Richard has over 35 years of domestic and global experience in management consulting, transformation/change management, and technology operations/partnering. He has lived and worked throughout Europe, Asia, and North America. He maintains a global reputation in technology, enabling innovation for transformational change. He has significant M&A experience including delivering numerous post-merger integration programs across the financial services, professional services, and entertainment industry sectors. He has held senior roles including Consulting Partner…

The odds of success with mergers and acquisitions are surprisingly low, but in this post, David Gross explains how to give M&A Transactions a larger chance of success. Trillions of dollars pour into mergers and acquisitions (M&A) annually as companies seek to increase market share, reduce costs, differentiate, diversify, refocus, and capture other sources of value. Unfortunately, M&A success is the exception, not the rule. A whopping 70 to 90 percent of transactions fail. This means, only 10 to 30…

Umbrex is pleased to welcome Giovanni Fontana Giusti with Stradé. After an engineering degree and an MBA Giovanni started in consulting in a French consulting firm (Bossard) then in Bain London and Sydney. After that he worked as an executive, then as a CEO/Business owner in the luxury business on one hand, and in the TIC industry (Testing, Inspection and Certification). Now he works as an independent consultant in Italy and in France….

Umbrex is pleased to welcome Joy Fairbanks with Fairbanks Venture Advisors. Joy is an experienced founder, investment evaluator, and advisor to high growth, innovative companies across sectors. Prior to forming her own boutique advisory, she served clients at LEK Consulting and Mitchell Madison Group where she was an engagement manager. Joy has extensive experience advising companies across geographies from M&A and strategic planning to process improvement and supply chain management. She advises on business modeling, customer discovery, MVPs/prototyping, product/market fit,…

Umbrex is pleased to welcome Marco Piacentino with Soir Bleu. A blend of strategy, operations and M&A consulting activities are the characteristics of Soir Bleu srl, the firm that Marco founded in 2012. The aim is to provide clients with an advantage point through a comprehensive, generalist view of their business with a touch of specific industry knowledge. Before 2012 Marco has been Senior Partner in charge of the ICT and Business Services Practices at Cross Border s.r.l., an M&A…

Umbrex is pleased to welcome Peter Korponai with Hungarian Enterprise Development Institute.  Peter has been running his strategy consulting practice since 2011. Peter started his career in consulting at McKinsey, where he spent 4 years working mainly for banking and energy sector clients in Hungary and neighboring countries. After McKinsey, he worked in line management as CFO in the medical device manufacturing and interactive media sectors. In 2007, he returned to consulting and joined CEMI, a Central Eastern Europe focused…

  Jeff Perry shares a post that identifies the positive potential of divestitures in a company’s growth portfolio.  Houston, do we have a problem? While many companies talk about the need to regularly reshape its portfolio, divestitures are too often considered aborted missions. Quite the contrary, divestitures can be rocket fuel for other business priorities of the parent company. Divestitures are unsung in portfolio-shaping. When businesses are rumored to be for sale, many questions are raised internally and externally: Why…

Umbrex is pleased to welcome Rodolphe Lebrun with LDP Partner.  Rodolphe Lebrun is an advisor and interim executive for biotech, medtech and biopharma. He spent 5 years at McKinsey focusing on Life Sciences and led commercial excellence at AbbVie Belgium for 2 years. Prior to McKinsey, he was a R&D project manager in aerospace within the Safran group. Rodolphe supports Life Sciences companies across their lifecycle: raising venture capital as interim CEO for startups, reviewing go-to-market strategies in scale-ups and…