[Jason KiangParticipant]

For those currently working in an M&A role, what is the structure of your company’s internal deal team? What does the deal team org chart look like and what roles and responsibilities does each person or department have?

For those not currently working in an M&A role, what do you think are the key roles within an internal acquisition team?

[Participant]

I am not in an M&A role. However, just taking a common sense approach to this, a starting point would be senior management identifying the range of M&A opportunities that fit the company’s M&A strategies. It seems reasonable to assign coordination of the effort to a director of corporate development, under the COO or CFO–or make it a responsibility of one of these executives. Before the first acquisition, this corporate development professional should develop a theoretical project plan template of what they see needing to get accomplished in a typical acquisition envisioned by senior management’s M&A strategy. Due diligence would be one section of the plan, and multiple steps would be “N/A” in many potential transactions. But just a matrix setting forth anticipated tasks, target dates, and personnel necessary to accomplish each task would help flesh out who needs to be involved, both for DD and other stages. Each acquisition will bring its own “lessons learned,” which will result in continuous revision of the template.

[Participant]

We are a small company (~$30M in revenue), so our team begins with our executive team (4 of us) for evaluation of the opportunity. Once we make a decision that we would like to pursue further then we expand that to the president’s staff. Between the 8 of us (including the president), we cover all aspects of the company. Each of us then brings in our own staff members as needed. For instance, as CFO, I have responsibility for IT, Purchasing, HR and Accounting/Finance at my company. I will bring my managers into the process as the transaction warrants.

[Author]

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