The company succession with a corporate buyer is in many cases the preferred solution of the business owner. But what is “the” corporate actually looking for?
Acquisitions that complement the existing product or service portfolio are certainly an obvious choice. Horizontal takeovers can quickly increase market power or vertical integration can be used to expand one’s own competence along the value chain.
But this is only the tip of the iceberg: Not only in the automotive industry are structural changes in the market demanding a realignment of the existing strategy.
To identify these hidden buyers, M&A advisors can use intelligent databases and matching platforms that employ semantic searches or taxonomies. In this way, a data-based approach can make the buyer universe much more transparent.
However, human interaction cannot be eliminated. Only through many conversations with strategic buyers do internal acquisition strategies become clearer. This means a considerable effort for all parties involved in the M&A process.
Matching platforms that conduct hundreds of market approaches in various industries for M&A consultants every year can also support this process. These countless interactions result in an ongoing refinement of the search profile of the corporate buyers with proprietary information about the actual in-house acquisition strategy.
Or would you have thought that an IT system house with a turnover of over 1 billion EUR would be looking for security services or a Big4 consulting firm for cyber security and creative IT services?