My guest on this episode is Roland Lessard, former Co-CEO of Morningside with his partner Tom Klein, a language translation services business that served over 4,000 clients in 55 countries. A core piece of their thesis revolved around M&A, and Tom and Roland through that experience acquired deep domain expertise in creating value through a methodological M&A and, more importantly, integration process.

This episode is all about M&A and corporate development, both for companies doing occasional M&A and those with more programmatic strategies, which is where Roland is spending most of his town now as an advisor to CEOs.

Today Roland and I talk about the “why” of M&A, how M&A most often destroys value and how to avoid this, getting the team right prior to beginning M&A, assembling and leading an integration team, planning for integration and pitfalls to avoid, and the role of debt.

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Learn more about Alex and Think Like an Owner at https://tlaopodcast.com/

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Links:

Roland on LinkedIn

Morningside

Topics:

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:04:34) - Catching up

(00:06:45) - Categorizing M&A

(00:09:45) - Why should someone consider pursuing M&A?

(00:16:22) - Horizontal deals

(00:21:48) - Building Integration Teams

(00:33:44) - Having a 12-month outlook, maximum

(00:41:03) - Creating a dealbook

(00:47:31) - Benchmarks for processes and projects

(00:55:07) - Categories of integrations

(00:59:56) - Metrics to track in order to make sure you’re staying on goal

(01:04:23) - The role of debt

(01:08:31) - Key Takeaways

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