Having worked in both law and private equity, I have a good sense of where the blind spots tend to be and of how and why things usually go wrong. I’ve learned that deals derail less because of numbers than because of mismatched languages and unspoken motives.
The first aim of my Real Deal workshops is to help professionals involved in M&A (be they lawyers, investors or bankers) speak each other’s languages better. In The Lawyer Edition, we uncover the commercial and financial levers behind the deal, demystify financial jargon and valuation, and link it all to the “home ground” of the transaction documents. For the Investor Edition, we focus more on deciphering the seemingly impenetrable legalese of share purchase agreements, why your excellent work on valuation needs to be complemented by really good understanding of closing accounts vs locked box, as well as which parts of the contracts you need to be laser focused on and which you can “leave to the lawyers.”
We can always stop here, at the point where we have a better grasp of the cross-disciplinary fine print; but my greatest lesson from 25 years in the trenches is that getting the technical bit right can only take you so far. In part 2 of the Real Deal workshops, we dive into the trickier and messier realm of managing yourself and others within the shifting sands of a live deal, from handling the inevitable difficult conversations to juggling what can feel like impossible competing demands on your time and energy. I won’t be offering pumped-up productivity hacks or woo-woo wonder methods; just the things I’ve seen actually work in my own life.