Blog – May 2016

With the Brexit vote little more than aone month away a might perhaps expect some timidity in the M&A market but from our perspective things continue in a healthy vein with plenty of activity in the Tech sector.

Getting things over the proverbial line however can be frustrating – especially for inexperienced clients. It is understandably difficult for a first-time seller to really grasp what is involved as at the outset what needs to be done might seem reasonably clear. But towards the end, when you think everything that could be crawled over has been crawled over (more than once!), it can be unbelievably frustrating to be on the receiving end of endless further queries about what you see as irrelevant minutiae. On a recent deal our client (an SME owner), asked of the very large, corporate acquirer “Are they experts or incompetent?” as yet more last minute queries rolled in, nudging completion a little further back each time.

The simple fact of the matter is that one has to manage this and recognise (however reluctantly) that this is inevitable – perhaps all the more so with large corporates. Those managing the due diligence may not be able to take the pragmatic route as feel they must cover off absolutely everything in their list before reporting up the chain of command.

To us, dealing with this aspect (and many others besides) is ‘normal’ and can help explain why so many say after the event that “we simply could not have done it without you” – even if they were sceptical about the need for help at the outset. It is always very difficult to convey the realities of what comprises a full sale process but I happened to note that on one recent assignment I had over 1,300 emails in the project folder. That might just give you some idea.