Exploring a potential acquisition is an exciting time for organizations: get out of your day job, poke around other companies’ “secrets” and feel the camaraderie in the war room. This is likely as close as it gets to the exciting vision of “working” that we had as children. The stakes are high, decisions are being made at a fast and furious pace!
Yet it’s interesting that this environment breeds optimistic scenarios as it is a well-known fact that most acquisitions eventually fall short of the original acquisition cases. If you want to avoid contracting a bad case of acquisition “deal fever,” which can often lead to overpaying, stay abreast of a few common issues when evaluating a potential acquisition:
Managing these elements can be done by creating the appropriate level of counter-pressure: