Acquistion Program
As you pursue an ongoing acquisition program, you are often faced with otherwise attractive acquisition candidates that have a problem that immediately lands them in the "discard pile". Your experience has taught you that certain issues, while possibly surmountable, are simply not worth the time and effort required to bring it home. So you move on.
Some of the typical issues are:
- Obvious cultural issues.
- Unrealistic price expectations.
- Operating in a difficult legal system.
- Too dependent on the founders.
If you have a large backlog of target companies to analyze and the one on your desk with the problem is not critical to the future of your company, maybe the discard pile is the right place for it. However, there are bound to be some candidates that you wish you could save but really can't justify the brain damage that their pursuit is certain to cause.
In such situations, perhaps the Chesterfield Group can see an alternative structure that gets you what you want, while avoiding the killer issue. We specialize in seeing opportunities to employ a variety of structures to allow companies to collaborate on common goals in the optimum way, i.e., avoiding the kinds of conflicts and issues described above that often characterize the target company. We want you to see us as a means to feel that you have explored all the alternatives before bringing out the "Reject" stamp.
There are several parts to the process, and often several iterations are required.
- Developing the shared objectives of the acquiring company and the target company.
- Examining the strengths and competitive advantages that each party brings to the table in pursuing those shared goals.
- Setting out the constraints of each party relating to these objectives.
- Placing the proposed arrangement in its environment, including an analysis of the industry structure, competitive situation, environmental trends and industry success factors.
- Considering all the above, exploring various Collaborative Business Structures that might offer alternatives to an acquisition that could achieve the goals without the issues generally associated with an acquisition.