Buying a company or business is not done just for the fun.

In the end your goal is to create a higher value after you have acquired it than before the acquisition.

The question is “what is the higher value and how do you define it”?

It is a challenging question and could be different for everybody who’s planning the do an acquisition.

But you can boil it down to the “new exit value” when at a certain moment in time you need or like to sell your company.

You like to get a higher value through a higher return of all your investments done over time.

This means that it is important to have a “realistic & achievable” picture of the potential synergies you can get out of an acquisition. .

In our experience, this is where a lot of acquisitions fail after the transaction.

The intended Return On Investment’s are not met and as such, instead if increasing your value, you destroy value.

So, your initial positive M&A journey that you were looking forward to, is turning into a nightmare.

LESSON LEARNED

Spent enough time in getting to the bottom of it in terms of the “promised” synergies.