M&a Science

Kison sits down with Sachin Kumar, Senior Director - M&A and Regional Lead for HR North America at Conduent, to discuss the topic of the not so famous process of Rebadging. Together they break down the process step by step and explain the use case. Some tips: Don’t forget to get the HR team involved quickly.  Without having an HR plan, focused job descriptions, and performance standards, rebadging can quickly turn into a big headache. Also, problems arise if Corp Dev was not informed because the business team doesn’t know how to manage an asset deal. So try your best to keep Corp Dev in the loop especially when the deal is scaling. 

On this episode, Kison speaks with Kim Jones, Senior HR M&A Manager at Microsoft. She conducts due diligence research and completes all HR-related integration activities as part of Microsoft's M&A programs.  Together they discuss what company culture is, at what of the deal to consider it, and how to assess the company culture. Hear Kim’s advice on identifying the early signs of a bad fit, how to minimize fear, and how to accommodate the target company’s culture. She also gives insight as to what affects culture that you may not expect, the challenges that arise when assimilating different cultures, and what some non-negotiables are.

In this episode, Kison interviews Dev Sirur, Director of M&A Integrations at Intel.nHe has spent over 23 years at Intel and worked on 40+ transactions over a 10 year period. Dev is a proven executive experienced in helping business leaders and executive management on M&A strategy and synergy drivers. Together they discuss preserving a company’s value during integration and give advice on how not to annihilate the value creation during M&A. Learn how to retain value through M&A, how to adjust the integration process to fit your company's specific needs, and how to drive an efficient yet thorough due diligence process. 

In this episode, Kison discusses the impact COVID-19 is having on M&A with Toby Tester, a Senior Consultant and Project Manager at BTD, Kevin Robbins a General Partner at Blue Delta Capital Partners and Co-Founder of Wolf Den Associates, and Fred Thiel, Chairman and Chief Advisor of Thiel Advisors, Inc.  For this discussion, Kison wanted to bring in industry professionals to talk about market shifts, the impact this pandemic is having on closing deals, and if we’re seeing any new deals arising because of COVID-19 we wouldn’t be seeing otherwise.

On this episode, Kison and Ritch Schaafsma, VP of Corporate Development, Global Mergers and Acquisitions at General Motors, discuss the ins and outs of international joint ventures. Ritch is an accomplished and internationally seasoned Senior Corporate Development Executive, with over 15+ years of experience offering execution, valuation, strategy and restructuring expertise for driving multi-billion dollar growth transactions to C-level executives and Boards of Directors of Industry-leading manufacturers to meet their strategic objectives. In this podcast you will hear about Ritch’s transition to working overseas, cultural challenges, and his favorite global transaction. Additionally, they discuss how to navigate national governments, what prompts an international joint venture, and what exactly the international joint venture process looks like. Please note the views expressed in this podcast do not reflect those of General Motors.

On this episode Kison speaks with Briana Elkington, Program Manager at VSP Global. Previously she was a Lead Project Manager at Oracle where she assembled a project management office responsible for the successful integration of acquired assets. She's led integration efforts for roughly 10 acquisitions throughout her career.  Together they discuss how to build an effective internal communication plan for M&A. Briana goes in depth on how to create a communication plan, how to effectively distribute that communication plan, and how to approach an onboarding supplier. You'll learn how to deal with heavy resistance and what challenges you can expect to face during the process.

On this episode, Kison Patel speaks with Russ Hartz, VP of Corporate Development at ANSYS, Inc. / former VP of Corporate Development at SAP. He’s an experienced Corporate Development professional with specific expertise in M&A and investments and post-merger integration. His role at ANSYS involves M&A strategy and deal sourcing, as well as managing transaction execution. Together, Kison and Russ discuss best practices he’s learned at SAP, how he was able to bring those best practices over to ANSYS, guiding principles he focuses on during a transaction, and how to begin building an integration process at a company that doesn’t have one. Russ also discusses how deal strategy affects company alignment and how he measures the success of a post-merger integration.

Kison Patel gives a sneak-peek into a panel discussion of the highly anticipated M&A Science Virtual Summit, featuring over 40 industry-leading practitioners. This panel discussion features Christina Amiry, Head of M&A Strategic Operations and Integrations at Atlassian and Steve Elliott, Head of Jira Align at Atlassian. Together they discuss the ways in which Atlassian ensured the acquisition of Jira Align was successful from both sides of the deal.

On this episode, Kison speaks with Kimberly Baird, Corporate Development Integration Lead at Cisco. She’s responsible for driving the successful integration of acquired organizations into Cisco by implementing best practice methodology rooted in M&A-specific project and change management developed over 200+ acquisitions. Today she shares tips on how to adjust your M&A practice to a virtual process.

On this episode, Kison speaks with Ben Sutton, a senior manager of corporate development at NCR Corporation, about executing transactions and what a senior manager’s role looks like. Together they discuss how to measure the success of a transaction, the difference between revenue synergy and cost synergy, and how you can predict what a leader wants out of a transaction. Ben breaks down legal terms he’s come to be familiar with and discusses potential learning curves to expect when entering a senior manager role. From predicting outcome wants incorrectly, transaction metrics, and experiencing post-close surprises, Ben covers every aspect of a senior manager corporate development role. 

On this episode, Kison speaks with Sallie Cunningham about how to plan a divestiture from HR’s perspective. Together they discuss the process of moving employees, how to approach ringfencing, and what Transition Service Agreements (TSAs) are. Sallie also explains what the key materials HR must have when it comes to preparing for due diligence during a divestiture and which transition records are required for HR to gather.

On this episode, Toby Tester interviews Kison Patel about his newly published book, Agile M&A,  and how Agile can transform the traditional M&A deal process. They discuss topics such as how companies can apply Agile techniques to the antiquated M&A process and take a deep dive into how Agile is a unique project framework that increases efficiency and closes deals faster. The two also address the importance of accountability and leadership.   Through this interview, Kison gives a step by step guide on how to implement this innovative framework and breaks down Agile to its fundamental pillars. Learn how to adopt the responsive mindset Agile requires and hear Kison’s opinion on the future of M&A. You can purchase Kison’s book on Amazon or at agilema.com.

On this episode, Kison Patel speaks with Stephanie Carty. Stephanie is a corporate communications professional with more than 15 years of experience at GE, KPMG and other companies. Her expertise is in executive communications and ensuring top leaders communicate with honesty, clarity, and credibility. Currently, Stephanie is a strategic advisor, specializing in employee communications. Learn components of communication plans, when to start planning, and behind the scenes activity that makes all the difference in the success of Day 1. In this episode, she tells Kison best practices for Day 1 and gives advice on how to avoid disasters. Stephanie also talks about a time she wrote 25 versions of a communication plan and how that unfolded at the time of signing.

On this episode, Kison speaks with Karen Isely of Isely Associates International regarding the impact people experience has on the outcome of M&A deals. Karen is an M&A specialist and the founder of Isely Associates International, an Australian-based global consulting business providing M&A advisory services to organizations growing by merger, acquisition or other similar business transactions. She brings experience as an HR professional, business leader and management consultant to every engagement and has contributed to nearly 150 deals, in-house as well as for corporate and private equity clients.

On this episode, Kison talks with PJ Patel, Co-CEO and Senior Managing Director at Valuation Research Corporation (VRC). VRC is a full-service, independent, global valuation firm that focuses exclusively on valuations that offer judgment beyond modeling. Kison and PJ discuss how to navigate intangible asset valuation in today’s market, how the current M&A climate is affecting valuation, and how to avoid the most common mistakes when conducting a valuation.

In this episode, Kison Patel discusses the groundbreaking research done by Dr. Keith Dunbar. As a Managing Partner at JKD Talent Solutions, his team delivers actionable leadership intelligence. With this intelligence, we enhance clients’ long-term profitability and growth by providing a unique, holistic view of leadership capabilities.  Keith gives insight into how leadership has more of an impact than culture, which is contrary to popular belief, and who actually has a bigger impact on deal success - middle management or C suite. They also cover why it’s taken so long for people to realize how much leadership impacts the success of a deal, how to look for those leadership traits in your staff, and what works the best in terms of incentivizing leadership in your team.

Kison speaks with Nichelle Maynard-Elliot, a corporate M&A Executive, public company board member, and corporate dealmaker with over 20 years of financial and legal experience in M&A business development and strategic partnerships at Fortune 300 multinational corporations and top-ranked international/boutique law firms. She’s a highly experienced corporate attorney lawyer, focusing on mergers and acquisitions.   

Kison speaks with Richard Harmon, a Managing Director at CSG Partners, a firm that helps owners of private, middle market companies achieve equity monetization while addressing personal goals. In this podcast, they discuss how ESOPs can harvest equity, enhance liquidity, and create tax advantages.  

Kison speaks with Anirvan Sen, the Founder and Managing Director of Fifth Chrome, a professional advisory firm that specializes in M&A integration and operational growth. In this podcast, they discuss creating deal value by focusing more on growth capabilities and revenue synergies than cost synergies.

Kison speaks with Jillian Kaebel-Sisk, an HR Global Mergers, Acquisitions, and Divestitures Manager at Caterpillar. This podcast covers how HR practitioners plan for and executive divestitures. They also discuss carve-out and divestiture challenges, as well as TSA agreements, asset vs. stock sale, due diligence, and more.