A View from the Trenches
By Jack Prouty, Past President of the M&A Leadership Council

Successful mergers and acquisitions hinge on creating value and mitigating risk. Working in M&A over the last 30 years has taught me the high value of being paranoid. Many challenges will crop up throughout any deal: from diligence, to integration pre-close planning and post-close transition management. M&A deals are challenging and complex: it is not business as usual. You need to expect and be prepared to deal with issues throughout the deal. Anyone expecting everything to operate smoothly and just as planned will have a disappointing and short career.