Don’t leave value on the table in your deals.

Defining and quantifying expected synergies and risks at an early stage in the M&A process leads to better outcomes through a more focused due diligence and subsequent integration process.

It’s a mistake to assume that management of the acquired company will take responsibility for integration projects that have been identified. Likewise, it is often a mistake to allow your existing management team to get too distracted with integration projects, leading to reduced performance at home.

How First Key can help…

First Key works with your Deal Team, whether it be internal management or external consultants leading the process, anywhere in the world.

At the front-end of the deal, we help you develop a “Deal Manifesto”, defining the key reasons for doing the deal and the most important sources of value creation.

After the deal closes, we can help you prioritize and implement the short list of critical integration actions that need to be completed to realize the ROI on your deal. Our core areas of expertise include:

  • Brewery technical
  • Beverage technical
  • Malting technical
  • Supply chain
  • Distribution and regulatory
  • Sales and marketing
  • People, processes and systems

Examples…

Integration projects aimed at realizing synergies include:

1. Incremental Sales

  • Expanding geography
    • Market coverage and expansion opportunities
  • Leveraging technology and intellectual capital
  • Product lines
    • Product cross-selling and piggy-back marketing
    • Leveraging key accounts
  • Distribution channels
    • Expanding routes to market

2. Cost Reduction

  • Procurement
    • Supplier rationalization, volume discounts
    • Consolidation/centralization of procurement staff and processing
  • Inventory optimization/consolidation
  • Production & process optimization
    • Best practices exchange, including lean, six-sigma methodologies
  • SKU rationalization
  • Capacity utilization
    • Production network production optimization
    • Asset optimization, disposal of redundant capacity/capabilities
    • Capital expenditure avoidance
  • Logistics & distribution
    • Warehousing and occupancy costs
    • Warehouse location modeling and optimization
    • Distribution network optimization
    • Freight volume and mode optimization
  • Overheads dilution
  • Selling, General & Administration cost synergies
    • Consolidate business services
  • Innovation / R&D program synergies

3. Management of Potential Negative Synergies (Dis-Synergies)

First Key can help you manage and mitigate potential negative synergies:

  • Mitigating loss of accounts
  • Developing a strong change management strategy
  • Avoiding loss of key people
  • Minimizing additional capital expenditure

After the integration project is completed, we can help you measure the synergy benefits realized for comparison to initial targets. This will help you evaluate deal performance and improve your overall M&A process for future deals