Midlands Super Acquirers Roundtable

Insider Media

A 'Buy & Build' strategy can massively steepen a company’s growth curve: skills, market share, diversification, geographic reach, savings. But it comes with major risks. So how can you make a success out of repeated acquisitions? Insider gathered together a group of "super-acquirers" - businesses that make multiple acquisitions - to discover how they make them succeed. We look at how they go about finding, negotiating and integrating. How they support vendors. We discover why culture is key, and emotional buy-in at all levels - from leaders to receptionists - is essential. And why, even if the numbers stack up, they will walk from a deal simply because it does not feel right.

Transcript

00:00Hi, I'm Kurt Jacobs, the editor of Midlands Business Insider, and I've just shared a fascinating

00:16debate on growth through acquisition. I brought together some most enthusiastic acquirers of other

00:23companies based in this region. We're talking businesses here that buy the firms on levels of

00:28dozens, scores of companies, and we're finding out why they do it. What do they get in terms of extra

00:37services, extra new people, extra skills, IT? And we look at the problems, integration, culture,

00:47getting the right price. And we also look at, sometimes, even though the deal looks great in

00:53paper, why do they walk away? Because it just doesn't feel right. Let's hear some of their comments.

01:01Hi, David Beach, CEO, Knights, PLC. Fabulous day today. Great to see different sectors all have

01:08such a common approach to M&A. I thought that was terrific. The takeaway for me was the three H's,

01:15history, honesty, and hope. I won't forget that when doing acquisitions. I thought that was fantastic.

01:19Hi, I'm Ben Bolt from Chalbrook Bank. I'm a senior director in the corporate leverage team.

01:24Key takeaways for me from this morning is how much planning and effort goes into the post-merger

01:31integration process from the M&A directors around the table. They take it incredibly serious,

01:38making sure that the cultures work, making sure that people are engaged with and can see a future

01:44with the new owner. There's been a very diverse range of businesses and sectors here. But I think

01:51what is common is the benefits of growth by acquisition, acquisitions. But what is also common

02:01is the themes in terms of the challenges and the objectives and the results, regardless of what sector

02:07you're in, what industry. They're common. There's a lot of shared ideas and themes that everybody's

02:13come away from and made a couple of good contacts and people are going to follow up with.

02:17So, Oli Devine, Corporate Development Director at Hill and Smith PLC. I think the main thing that I

02:22took from the session today is just vastly different approaches to M&A, whether that be

02:28really getting stuck into the people, processes, the AI is one of the scenarios that we took. So,

02:35that variety of approach is sort of more than one way to skin a cat, as it were.

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Transcript

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