What sets successful acquirers apart during an M&A wave?  

First, it’s the strategy that got you to the acquisition in the first place. If that thinking wasn’t solid, you’re pushing a rock uphill, no matter how good the integration is. Then it’s the rigor and discipline around integration planning—at best, done before Day One, and at worst, shortly thereafter.  

How important is familiarity between merging companies?  

It helps. It’s like marrying your best friend. If you’ve worked together or partnered, that makes the marriage more natural. But even when you don’t have that luxury, you can pursue ways to partner—co-market, joint venture—so the combination becomes inevitable.  

When do you know if a deal is working—or not?  

You can tell a deal is not working fairly quickly after Day One. But you can’t tell if it has worked for a couple of years. Cost synergies and operations glitches show up fast. But real value—growth, revenue, margin expansion—takes longer to emerge.  

Do certain types of deals succeed more often?  

All types of mergers can succeed—but only if the integration approach fits the deal. Most M&A playbooks focus on consolidation mergers, where two similar companies combine. But when the merger involves “unlike” organizations—whether it’s upstream or downstream, big acquiring small, or acquiring a specific capability—a completely different playbook is required. Many companies underestimate just how different that approach needs to be. 

Where do things go wrong in due diligence?  

People usually cover financial, legal, and risk due diligence well. Strategic due diligence? Not so much. You had a reason to pursue the deal—now you need to rigorously test whether those assumptions actually hold up.  

Any early red flags you watch for?  

Operational instability, people instability—those are clear signs. Employees leaving. Or ones you wanted to leave who are sticking around. Also, customers are leaving or using the merger as an excuse to renegotiate contracts. Those are overt signals. Subtle flags, like cultural disconnects, require extra attention. 

How does culture show up in deal success or failure?  

People and culture are huge. Traditional culture tools don’t work in M&A. We don’t have the luxury of control over timing—we’ve got to make things happen Day One and beyond. Integration teams should be culture labs. If you have 500 integration tasks in a plan, some of them won’t happen without a direct culture intervention. Especially in unlike mergers. Some companies say, “We’ll leave it alone for a while.” Then they get stuck in parallel with their acquisition forever.  

Thoughts on earnouts?  

Earn-outs can be really problematic. They freeze integration—sometimes for a year. And during that time, you lose momentum. People settle into new roles, and then you have to unfreeze everything. When an earn-out is unavoidable, different integration planning techniques are needed. 

Does the current geopolitical instability add complexity?  

Absolutely. Each market has different labor laws, data rules, and antitrust standards. You’ve also got geopolitical tensions now turning cross-border M&A deals into political pawns. That adds risk—upfront and downstream.  

What about AI—do you see it changing M&A?  

Definitely. AI is great at things that involve data and pattern recognition—scanning due diligence docs, spotting opportunities, and mapping processes. But interpretation? Culture? Nuance? That’s still human.  

Private equity seems more visible now—is that new?  

PE has always been around. What’s different is that PE firms now look more like strategic buyers. They want real synergies, real logic—not just financial engineering. But they still want an exit, whereas traditional strategic buyers tend to buy and hold.  

Any final takeaways for today’s dealmakers?  

The fundamentals still matter—what’s the strategy, where’s the value creation, how do I get the right people? Make the integration plan real, detailed, but living—not a one-and-done doc. Be disciplined but stay flexible. That’s how deals work.