Stories from our work · 4 min read
What the numbers didn't say
By the time a deal reaches the final stages, the spreadsheet has been checked many times over. Revenue, costs, contracts, liabilities. What it cannot tell you is who will be running the business you have just bought, or whether they will want to.
Mergers and acquisitions · HR due diligence · Culture · Integration
A global technology corporation was buying several companies across three continents. Each one came with its own history, its own country, its own way of doing things, and its own leaders, who were about to become part of something much bigger.
The finance teams had done their work. The question nobody had fully answered was a human one. Who exactly were they buying?
Meeting the people behind the deal
We started with the leaders.
Executives arriving through an acquisition are in an unusual position. Some are energised by the move. Some are quietly deciding whether to stay. Many are still working out what the new owner really wants from them. We interviewed and assessed the executives joining from each business to understand their strengths, their intentions and how they were likely to fit into the wider group.
Reading the cultures
Then we looked at the places they came from.
A company that seems similar on paper can work very differently in practice. How decisions get made, how people speak up, how fast things move. We evaluated the culture of each business, so the group could see where its new companies matched its own way of working and where they did not.
None of that would matter if it stayed in a report. So the findings went straight into the corporate integration plans, shaping what happened in each business once its deal closed.
The part that outlasted us
The transitions were smoother, and teams and regions came into closer alignment after the acquisitions. Operations held up through the integration period.
The result we are proudest of came later. When the group made further acquisitions, it used the same playbook. The way of looking at people and culture before a deal closed had become part of how the business buys companies. It no longer needed us in the room to do it.
The share price rose over that period too. As with any share price, many forces were at work, and we do not claim it as our result.
Why we tell this one
Due diligence is usually about what you are buying. This was about who. And the best thing we left behind was a way for the client to keep asking that question without us.